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148 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING
I do not mean that they reached any imitative resemblance to nature. They had neither skill to do it, nor care to do it. Their art was conventional and imperfect, but they considered it only as a language wherein to convey the knowledge of certain facts; it was perfect enough for that; and though always reaching on to greater attainments, they never suffered their imperfections to disturb and check them in their immediate purposes. And this mode of treating all subjects was persisted in by the greatest men until the close of the fifteenth century.
125. Now so justly have the Pre-Raphaelites chosen their time and name, that the great change which clouds the career of mediæval art was effected, not only in Raphael’s time, but by Raphael’s own practice, and by his practice in the very centre of his available life.
You remember, doubtless, what high ground we have for placing the beginning of human intellectual strength at about the age of twelve years.* Assume, therefore, this period for the beginning of Raphael’s strength. He died at thirty-seven. And in his twenty-fifth year, one half-year only past the precise centre of his available life, he was sent for to Rome, to decorate the Vatican for Pope Julius II., and having until that time worked exclusively in the ancient and stern mediæval manner, he, in the first chamber which he decorated in that palace, wrote upon its walls the Mene, Tekel, Upharsin of the Arts of Christianity.
And he wrote it thus: On one wall of that chamber he placed a picture of the World or Kingdom of Theology, presided over by Christ. And on the side wall of that same chamber he placed the World or Kingdom of Poetry, presided over by Apollo. And from that spot, and from that hour, the intellect and the art of Italy date their degradation.1
* Luke ii. 42, 49.
1 [Compare § 14 of the lecture “Mending the Sieve” in a later volume. The reference is of course to the Stanza del Segnatura, completed by Raphael (d. 1520) in 1511, after three years’ labour. On one wall is depicted Theology and the
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
