Read Ebook: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 06 Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists by Hubbard Elbert

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The deep religious devotion of Bartolomeo set the key for the first work done by Raphael at Florence. Most of the time the young man and the monk lived and worked in the same studio. It was a wonderfully prolific period for Raphael; from Fifteen Hundred Four to Fifteen Hundred Eight he pushed forward with a zest and an earnestness he never again quite equaled. Most of his beautiful Madonnas belong to this period, and in them all are a dignity, grace and grandeur that lift them out of ecclesiastic art, and place them in the category of living portraits.

Before this, Raphael belonged to the Umbrian School, but now his work must be classed, if classed at all, as Florentine. The handling is freer, the nude more in evidence, and the anatomy shows that the artist is working from life.

Bartolomeo used to speak of Raphael affectionately as "my son," and called the attention of Bramante, the architect, to his work. The beauty of his Madonnas was being discussed in every studio, and when the "Ansidei" was exhibited in the Church of Santa Croce, such a crowd flocked to see the picture that services had to be dismissed. The rush continued until a thrifty priest bethought him to stand at the main entrance with a contribution-box and a stout stick, and allow no one to enter who did not contribute good silver for "the worthy poor."

Bartolomeo acknowledged that his "pupil" was beyond him. He was invited to add a finishing touch to the Masaccio frescos; Leonardo, the courtly, had smiled a gracious recognition, and Michelangelo had sneezed at mention of his name. Bramante, back at Rome, told Pope Julius the Second, "There is a young Umbrian at Florence we must send for."

Great things were happening at Rome about this time: all roads led thitherward. Pope Julius had just laid the cornerstone of Saint Peter's, and full of ambition was carrying out the dictum of Pope Nicholas the Fifth, that "the Church should array herself in all the beauteous spoils of the world, in order to win the minds of men."

The Renaissance was fairly begun, fostered and sustained by the Church alone. The Quattrocento--that time of homely peace and the simple quiet of John Ball and his fellows--lay behind.

Raphael had begun his Roman Period, which was to round out his working life of barely eighteen years, ere the rest of the Pantheon was to be his.

Before this his time had been his own, but now the Church was his mistress. But it was a great honor that had come to him, greater far than had ever before been bestowed on any living artist. Barely twenty-five years of age, the Pope treated him as an equal, and worked him like a packhorse. "He has the face of an angel," cried Julius, "and the soul of a god!"--when some one suggested his youth.

Pope Leo the Tenth, of the Medici family, succeeded Julius. He sent Michelangelo to Florence to employ his talents upon the Medicean church of San Lorenzo. He dismissed Perugino, Pinturicchio and Piero Delia Francesca, although Raphael in tears pleaded for them all. Their frescos were destroyed, and Raphael was told to go ahead and make the Vatican what it should be.

His first large work was to decorate the Hall of the Signatures , where we today see the "Dispute." Near at hand is the famous "School of Athens." In this picture his own famous portrait is to be seen with that of Perugino. The first place is given to Perugino, and the faces affectionately side by side are posed in a way that has given a cue to ten thousand photographers.

The attitude is especially valuable, as a bit of history showing Raphael's sterling attachment to his old teacher. The Vatican is filled with the work of Raphael, and aside from the galleries to which the general public is admitted, studies and frescos are to be seen in many rooms that are closed unless, say, Archbishop Ireland be with you, when all doors fly open at your touch. The seven Raphael tapestries are shown at the Vatican an hour each day; the rest of the time the room is closed to protect them from the light. However, the original cartoons at South Kensington reveal the sweep and scope of Raphael's genius better than the tapestries themselves.

Work, unceasing work, filled his days. The ingenuity and industry of the man were marvelous. Upwards of eighty portraits were painted during the Roman Period, besides designs innumerable for engravings, and even for silver and iron ornaments required by the Church. Pupils helped him much, of course, and among these must be mentioned Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni. These young men lived with Raphael in his splendid house that stood halfway between Saint Peter's and the Castle Angelo. Fire swept the space a hundred years later, and the magnificence it once knew has never been replaced. Today, hovels built from stone quarried from the ruins mark the spot. But as one follows this white, dusty road, it is well to remember that the feet of Raphael, passing and repassing, have, more than any other one street of Rome, made it sacred soil.

We have seen that Bramante brought Raphael to Rome, and Pope Leo the Tenth remembered this when the first architect of Saint Peter's passed away. Raphael was appointed his successor. The honor was merited, but the place should have gone to one not already overworked. In Fifteen Hundred Fifteen Raphael was made Director of Excavations, another office for which his esthetic and delicate nature was not fitted. In sympathy, of course, his heart went out to the antique workers of the ancient world, on whose ruins the Eternal City is built; but the drudgery of overseeing and superintendence belonged to another type of man.

The stress of the times had told on Raphael; he was thirty-five, rich beyond all Umbrian dreams of avarice, on an equality with the greatest and noblest men of his time, honored above all other living artists. But life began to pall; he had won all--and thereby had learned the worthlessness of what the world has to offer. Dreams of rest, of love and a quiet country home, came to him. He was betrothed to Maria di Bibbiena, a niece of Cardinal Bibbiena. The day of the wedding had been set, and the Pope was to perform the ceremony.

But the Pope regarded Raphael as a servant of the Church: he had work for him to do, and moreover he had fixed ideas concerning the glamour of sentimentalism, so he requested that the wedding be postponed for a space.

A request from the Pope was an order, and so the country house was packed away with other dreams that were to come true all in God's good time.

But the realization of love's dream did not come true, for Raphael had a rival. Death claimed his bride.

She was buried in the Pantheon, where within a year Raphael's wornout body was placed beside hers; and there the dust of both mingle.

The history of this love-tragedy has never been written; it lies buried there with the lovers. But a contemporary said that the fear of an enforced separation broke the young woman's heart; and this we know, that after her death, Raphael's hand forgot its cunning, and his frame was ripe for the fever that was so soon to burn out the strands of his life.

Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Perugino and Fra Bartolomeo had all made names for themselves before Raphael appeared upon the scene. Yet they one and all profited by his example, and were the richer in that he had lived.

Michelangelo was born nine years before Raphael and survived him forty-three years.

Titian was six years old when Raphael was born, and he continued to live and work for fifty-six years after Raphael had passed away.

It was a cause of grief to Michelangelo, even to the day of his death, that he and Raphael had not been close, personal and loving friends, as indeed they should have been.

The art-world was big enough for both. Yet Rome was divided into two hostile camps: those who favored Raphael; and those who had but one prophet, Michelangelo. Busybodies rushed back and forth, carrying foolish and inconsequential messages; and these strong yet gentle men, both hungering for sympathy and love, were thrust apart.

When Raphael realized the end was nigh, he sent for Perugino, and directed that he should complete certain work. His career had begun by working with Perugino, and now this friend of a lifetime must finish the broken task and make good the whole. He bade his beloved pupils, one by one, farewell; signed his will, which gave most of his valuable property to his fellow-workers; and commended his soul to the God who gave it. He died on his birthday, Good Friday, April Sixth, Fifteen Hundred Twenty, aged thirty-seven years. Michelangelo wore mourning upon his sleeve for a year after Raphael's death. And once Michelangelo said, "Raphael was a child, a beautiful child, and if he had only lived a little longer, he and I would have grasped hands as men and worked together as brothers."

LEONARDO

There is a little book by George B. Rose, entitled, "Renaissance Masters," which is quite worth your while to read. I carried a copy, for company, in the side-pocket of my coat for a week, and just peeped into it at odd times. I remember that I thought so little of the volume that I read it with a lead-pencil and marked it all up and down and over, and filled the fly-leaves with random thoughts, and disfigured the margins with a few foolish sketches.

Then one fine day White Pigeon came out to the Roycroft Shop from Buffalo, as she was passing through. She came on the two-o'clock train and went away on the four-o'clock, and her visit was like a window flung open to the azure.

White Pigeon remained at East Aurora only two hours--"not long enough" she said, "to knock the gold and emerald off the butterfly's beautiful wings."

White Pigeon saw the little book I have mentioned, on my table in the tower-room. She picked it up and turned the leaves aimlessly; then she opened her Boston bag and slipped the book inside, saying as she did so:

"You do not mind?"

And I said, "Certainly not!"

Then she added, "I like to follow in the pathway you have blazed."

That closed the matter so far as the little book was concerned. Save, perhaps, that after I had walked to the station with White Pigeon and she had boarded the car, she stepped out upon the rear platform, and as I stood there at the station watching the train disappear around the curve, White Pigeon reached into the Boston bag, took out the little book and held it up.

That was the last time I saw White Pigeon. She was looking well and strong, and her step, I noticed, was firm and sure, and she carried the crown of her head high and her chin in. It made me carry my chin in, too, just by force of example, I suppose--so easily are we influenced. When you walk with some folks you slouch along, but others there be who make you feel an upward lift and skyey gravitation--it is very curious!

Yet I do really believe White Pigeon is forty, or awfully close to it. There are silver streaks among her brown braids, and surely the peachblow has long gone from her cheek. Then she was awfully tanned --and that little mole on her forehead, and its mate on her chin, stand out more than ever, like the freckles on the face of Alcibiades Roycroft when he has taken on his August russet.

I think White Pigeon must be near forty! That is the second book she has stolen from me; the other was Max Muller's "Memories"--it was at the Louvre in Paris, August the Fourteenth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety- five, as we sat on a bench, silent before the "Mona Lisa" of Leonardo.

This book, "Renaissance Masters," I didn't care much for, anyway. I got no information from it, yet it gave me a sort o' glow--that is all--like that lecture which I heard in my boyhood by Wendell Phillips.

There is only one thing in the book I remember, but that stands out as clearly as the little mole on White Pigeon's forehead. The author said that Leonardo da Vinci invented more useful appliances than any other man who ever lived, except our own Edison.

I know Edison: he is a most lovable man , very deaf--and glad of it, he says, because it saves him from hearing a lot of things he doesn't wish to hear. "It is like this," he once said to me: "deafness gives you a needed isolation; reduces your sensitiveness so things do not disturb or distract; allows you to concentrate and focus on a thought until you run it down--see?"

Edison is a great Philistine--reads everything I write--has a complete file of the little brownie magazine; and some of the "Little Journeys" I saw he had interlined and marked. I think Edison is one of the greatest men I ever met--he appreciates Good Things.

I told Edison how this writer, Rose, had compared him with Leonardo. He smiled and said, "Who is Rose?" Then after a little pause he continued, "The Great Man is one who has been a long time dead--the woods are full of wizards, but not many of them know that"; and the Wizard laughed softly at his own joke.

What kind of a man was Leonardo? Why, he was the same kind of a man as Edison--only Leonardo was thin and tall, while Edison is stout. But you and I would be at home with either. Both are classics and therefore essentially modern. Leonardo studied Nature at first hand --he took nothing for granted--Nature was his one book. Stuffy, fussy, indoor professors--men of awful dignity--frighten folks, cause children to scream, and ladies to gaze in awe; but Leonardo was simple and unpretentious. He was at home in any society, high or low, rich or poor, learned or unlearned--and was quite content to be himself. It's a fine thing to be yourself!

Thackeray once said, "If I had met Shakespeare on the stairs, I know I should have fainted dead away!" I do not believe Shakespeare's presence ever made anybody faint. He was so big that he could well afford to put folks at their ease.

If Leonardo should come to East Aurora, Bertie, Oliver, Lyle and I would tramp with him across the fields, and he would carry that leather bag strung across his shoulder, just as he ever did when in the country. He was a geologist and a botanist, and was always collecting things .

We would tramp with him, I say, and if the season were right we would go through orchards, sit under the trees and eat apples. And Leonardo would talk, as he liked to do, and tell why the side of fruit that was towards the sun took on a beautiful color first; and when an apple fell from the tree he would, so to speak, anticipate Sir Isaac Newton and explain why it fell down and not up.

That leather bag of his, I fear, would get rather heavy before we got back, and probably Oliver and Lyle would dispute the honor of carrying it for him.

Leonardo was once engaged by Cesare Borgia to fortify the kingdom of Romagna. It was a brand-new kingdom, presented to the young man by Pope Alexander the Sixth. It was really the Pope who ordered Leonardo to survey the tract and make plans for the fortifications and canals and all that--so Leonardo didn't like to refuse. Cesare Borgia had the felicity of being the son of the Pope, but the Pope used to refer to him as his nephew--it was a habit that Popes once had. Pope Alexander also had a daughter--by name, Lucrezia Borgia-- sister to Cesare and very much like him, for they took their diversion in the same way.

Leonardo started in to do the work and make plans for fortifications that should be impregnable. He looked the ground over thoroughly, traveling on horseback, and his two servants followed him up in a cart drawn by a bull, which Leonardo calmly explains was a "side- wheeler."

Leonardo carried a big sketchbook, and as he made plans for redoubts, he made notes to the effect that crows fly in flocks without a leader, and wild ducks have a system and fly V shape, with a leader that changes off from time to time with the privates. Also, a waterfall runs the musical gamut, and the water might be separated so as to play a tune. Also, the leaves turn to gold through oxidation, and robins pair for life.

Leonardo also wrote at this time on the movements of the clouds, the broken strata of rocks, the fertilization of flowers, the habits of bees, and a hundred other themes which fill the library of notebooks that he left.

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