For nine years Raphael worked at the
decoration of the palace, always being pressed, hurried, and even
worried by two successive popes who employed him. The wall spaces which
he had to fill were often awkwardly broken up with windows and doors,
but he easily overcame whatever difficulties were encountered. To
succeed apparently without struggle was a peculiar gift granted to
Raphael above any other artist of his day. The frescoes painted by
him in the Vatican illustrated subjects from Greek philosophy and
medieval Church history, as well as from the Old and New Testament.
As an illustrator of sacred writ he never attempted that verisimilitude
in Eastern surroundings to which Hubert van Eyck leaned, neither was
he satisfied with the dress of his own day in which other painters
were wont to clothe their sacred characters. The historical sense,
which has driven some modern artists to much antiquarian research to
discover exactly what Peter and Paul must have worn, did not exist
before the nineteenth century. Raphael felt, nevertheless, that the
clothes of the Renaissance were hardly suitable for Noah and Abraham,
so he invented a costume of his own, founded upon Roman dress, but
different from oriental or contemporary clothes.
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