DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51585#0114
110
EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
open galleries running round three sides of an open
court; and the gallery on the second story is the
one painted under Raphael’s direction. Up the sides
and round the windows are arabesque ornaments,
festoons of fruit, flowers, animals, all combined and
grouped together with the most exquisite and playful
fancy : they have been much injured by time, yet
more by the barbarous treatment of the French sol-
diery when Rome was sacked in 1527, and worst of
all by unskilful attempts at restoration. The pic-
tures in the cupolas, being out of reach, are better
preserved. Sacred subjects were never represented
in so beautiful, so poetical, and so intelligible a
manner as by Raphael, but as the copies and en-
gravings of these works are innumerable, and easily
met with, we shall not enter into a particular de-
scription of them ; very good copies of several may
be seen at the National School of Design at So-
merset House.*
There was still another great work for the Va-
tican intrusted to Raphael. The interior of the
Sistine Chapel had been ornamented round the
lower walls with paintings in imitation of tapes-
* A set of excellent engravings from the series, in a fine
free style, and of a large size, and all executed at Rome after
the original frescoes, is now publishing by Parker in the
Strand, at the extraordinary low price of six engravings for
nine shillings. The subjects, the size, and the fine taste of
the execution, render them admirable ornaments for the
walls of a school-room or study.
EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
open galleries running round three sides of an open
court; and the gallery on the second story is the
one painted under Raphael’s direction. Up the sides
and round the windows are arabesque ornaments,
festoons of fruit, flowers, animals, all combined and
grouped together with the most exquisite and playful
fancy : they have been much injured by time, yet
more by the barbarous treatment of the French sol-
diery when Rome was sacked in 1527, and worst of
all by unskilful attempts at restoration. The pic-
tures in the cupolas, being out of reach, are better
preserved. Sacred subjects were never represented
in so beautiful, so poetical, and so intelligible a
manner as by Raphael, but as the copies and en-
gravings of these works are innumerable, and easily
met with, we shall not enter into a particular de-
scription of them ; very good copies of several may
be seen at the National School of Design at So-
merset House.*
There was still another great work for the Va-
tican intrusted to Raphael. The interior of the
Sistine Chapel had been ornamented round the
lower walls with paintings in imitation of tapes-
* A set of excellent engravings from the series, in a fine
free style, and of a large size, and all executed at Rome after
the original frescoes, is now publishing by Parker in the
Strand, at the extraordinary low price of six engravings for
nine shillings. The subjects, the size, and the fine taste of
the execution, render them admirable ornaments for the
walls of a school-room or study.