RAPHAEL AFTER nearly four centuries of biographical research, and the publication of a stupendous number of volumes and pamphlets, many incidents in the life of Raphael still remain shrouded in mystery. They have been transmitted to us, through the lapse of time, more as popular legends than as facts established by contemporary evidence. We have not succeeded, for instance, in discovering the text of his will, although every archive has been searched and ransacked in quest of it, especially by Adam Rossi;1 and yet we know that Raphael, already in the grip of death, dictated such a document to his notary on or about the fourth day of April of the year 1520, because mention of its existence occurs in other legal papers of the time. Another dubious side of Raphael's career is the one concerning his love entanglements, two of which have become especially conspicuous: his betrothal to Maria Bibbiena and his liaison with the handsome girl from the Trastevere known as the "daughter of the baker." There were probably others, notwithstanding the attempts made by certain biographers to depict him as an angel on earth, a forerunner of St. Louis Conzaga, worthy of being canonized on the altars of his Church. I have read with patience the sixteen heavy articles published on this subject by the journal "Il Raffaello" in 1879, but I cannot say they lift 66 1 Compare Archivio Storico dell' Arte, vol. i, a. 1888, p. 3. 2 "Il Raffaello," Rivista d' Arte, published at Urbino by Elpidio Righi. by one inch the veil which darkens this side of the master's life. To the formal charges brought forward by Giorgio Vasari, Simone Fornari da Reggio, and Missirini, the apologist of the "Raffaello" opposes the evidence of Mario Fabio, Celio Calcagnini, Marcantonio Michiel, Fulvio and Paolo Giovio, not to mention more recent writers who have likewise expressed opposite views on the morality of his life in general, and on the cause of his death in particular. The impression left on the impartial reader by these conflicting statements is that Raphael was a youth exceedingly shy in the presence of the fairer sex, and the readier, therefore, to give his whole soul to the one who would help him overcome his timidity, and to feel the fascination of her charms. Between the conventional, frigid, measured love of Maria Bibbiena and the simple, straightforward passion of the Fornarina, he chose the one that was more consonant with his own nature; and without openly breaking the faith given to Maria in July, 1514, he delayed the fulfilment of his pledge from month to month, from year to year, until it was too late to make matters right. There is no doubt that Maria died of a broken heart and of wounded pride at having the date of her marriage thus indefinitely postponed, and a low-born girl, a baker's daughter, preferred to herself, the niece of the powerful cardinal Bernardo Divizi and a cherished friend of the Pope. Her personal attractions, besides, were considerable, if we may trust the evidence of Comolli, who calls her a "bella et dignitosa fanciulla." The cardinal, it seems, had goaded Raphael into asking her to be his wife (the expression used by Vasari is that he had harassed the artist with his scheme of marriage for a number of years) until he could refuse no longer without compromising his artistic career.1 The It is probable, if not certain, that Raphael owed to the influence of Car betrothal took place about the first day of July, 1514; at least this is the date of the letter in which he announces to Simone Battista Ciarla his formal engagement; but, having already pledged himself, soul and body, to his fair model, whom he had raised to the glory of the altars in so many masterpieces, he found a way of postponing the final issue, until the death of Maria made him a free but not a happy man. The wording of the epitaph of the unfortunate girl-buried in the Pantheon almost side by side with Raphael—is such as to make us feel that the survivor must have repented of his conduct; it being, however, too late to mend the wrong he had done, he made a public avowal of his guilt. The inscription, freely translated, says: "We, Baldassare Turini da Pescia and Gianbattista Branconi dall' Aquila, testamentary executors and recipients of the last wishes of Raphael, have raised this memorial to his affianced wife, Maria, daughter of Antonio of Bibbiena, whom death deprived of a happy marriage," etc. As regards the second and truest love of Raphael, the accounts given by his early biographers rest more on tradition than on facts. We only know the girl to have been dinal Bibbiena his commission for the cartoons of the tapestries. A MS. volume in Prince Chigi's library, marked H, II, 22, containing notes on the reconstruction of St. Peter's, collected by order of Pope Alexander VII, shows the following entry under the date June 15, 1515: "The reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro to pay 300 ducats by order of Bernardo Bibbiena, cardinal of Santa Maria in Portico, to Raffaele da Urbino, on account of the Cartoons for the Tapestries, which are to be forwarded to Flanders." Another sum of 134 ducats is registered on December 20, 1516, to the same purpose. The drawing of the cartoons must have required at least nineteen months of work, and yet the artist received only 434 ducats in remuneration. As regards the tapestries themselves, Vasari and Baldinucci pretend to establish their cost at seventy thousand scudi; the author of the Vita di Raffaele at sixty; Cardinal Pallavicino at fifty: all quite wide of the truth, because Paride de' Grassi, the Pope's diarist, on the first day they were exhibited in the Sixtine chapel, entered their cost at two thousand scudi each. of humble birth, most likely the daughter of a baker living in the Trastevere, somewhere between the churches of Santa Dorotea and Santa Cecilia. Attached to her dwelling was a small kitchen-garden, enclosed by a wall so low that any passer-by could catch a glimpse of the inside by raising himself slightly on tiptoe. Here the baker's daughter often came, perhaps in search of herbs and flowers, perhaps to spread the household linen in the sun; and here, on the other side of the wall, many young artists, attracted by the fame of her beauty, would halt on their way home and endeavor to obtain speech with her. It now seems certain that the Fornarina's name was Margherita; yet the identification rests on the authority of one document only, viz., of a copy of the Giunta edition of Vasari of 1568, formerly owned by Giuseppe Vannutelli and now in Florence, the marginal notes of which were probably written by one who had known Raphael in his lifetime. This anonymous commentator has written the name twice in connection with Vasari's passage: "Marcantonio [Raimondi] made a number of prints for Raphael, which the latter gave to his assistant Baviera, in consideration of the services rendered by him to the young woman whom Raphael loved up to the hour of his death, and whose lifelike portrait he had painted (che pareva viva viva)." On the margin of the leaf the anonymous scholiast wrote, first: "Servitore di Raffaello chiamato il Baviera" (Raphael's servant, named il Baviera); and again, "Ritratto di Margherita donna di Raffaello" (portrait of Margherita, the love of Raphael). Shall we accept the name as genuine, or shall we repeat with the poet Aleardi :-- "il vero Tuo nome il mondo non conobbe mai : più che quello di molte imperatrici.” Roman tradition points out as the home of the girl a modest house near the corner of the Via di Santa Dorotea The window of the so-called house of the Fornarina, by the church of Santa Dorotea and the Porta Settimiana, the ground floor of which is actually occupied by a bakery called "il Forno della Fornarina;" but this is all the evidence we can produce in favor of the tradition. No document has yet been found to prove the veracity of the charming legend, and the Santa |