Excerpt from Raphael Michelangelo's stupendous creations may impress us more profoundly; the magic of Leonardo's art may attract us by a more subtle spell; but for the vast majority of - the human race, Raphael will always remain the greatest and most popular of painters. Even Titian can hardly rival him in this respect. The art of the mighty Venetian, who lived more than twice as long, retaining the glow and passion of youth to the last, is more complex in its aims and less simple and direct in its appeal to mankind at large. Raphael, on the contrary, speaks to us in a language which all can understand, and the range of his sympathies is as wide as human nature itself. On the one hand, his frescoes of Galatea and the Selamool jyfbfhf' mb'ody theiiighest and noblest dreams of, the Renaissance; on the other, his cartoons of Christ and ibe Apostles fixed the types that were employed by all future artists and influenced popular conceptions of Bible subjects for centuries to come. If the living portraits which he has left us of his most illustrious contemporaries are of priceless value in the eyes of the historical student, the divine beauty and tenderness of his Madonnas appeal to the humblest and most ignorant among us. No pictures have been so often copied and reproduced as these none, we may safely assert, have ever been so universally admired and beloved. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.