_L'Art du Dix-huitième Siècle_ (3d ed., Paris, 1880).




THE SISTINE MADONNA

(_RAPHAEL_)

F.A. GRUYER


Raphael seemed to have attained perfection in the _Virgin with the
Fish_; however, four or five years later, he was to rise infinitely
higher and display something superior to art and inaccessible to
science.

It was in 1518 that the Benedictines of the monastery of St. Sixtus
ordered this picture. They had required that the Virgin and the Infant
Jesus should be in the company of St. Sixtus and St. Barbara. This is
how Raphael entered into their views.

Deep shadows were veiling from us the majesty of the skies. Suddenly
light succeeds the obscurity, and the Infant Jesus and Mary appear
surrounded by a brightness so intense that the eyes can scarcely bear
it. Between two green curtains drawn to either side of the picture, amid
an aureole of innumerable cherubin, the Virgin is seen standing upon the
clouds, with her son in her arms, showing him to the world as its
Redeemer and Sovereign Judge. Lower down, St. Sixtus and St. Barbara are