When Raphael, in the last year of his life, was commissioned by the Cardinal de’ Medici to paint an altar-piece for the Cathedral of Narbonne, he selected for his subject the Transfiguration of our Lord.

[Illustration:  THE TRANSFIGURATION.
        Raphael.]

Every one knows that this picture has a world-wide fame; it has, indeed, been styled the “greatest picture in the world;” it has also been criticised as if Raphael, the greatest artist who ever lived, had been here unmindful of the rules of Art.  But it is clear that of those who have enthusiastically praised or daringly censured, few have interpreted its real significance.  Some have erred in ignorantly applying the rules of Art where they were in no respect applicable.  Others, not claiming to know anything, or care anything about rules of Art, insisting on their right to judge what is or is not intelligible to them, have given what I must needs call very absurd opinions about what they do not understand.  It has been objected by one set of critics that there is a want of unity, that the picture is divided in two, and that these two parts not only do not harmonize, but “mutually hurt each other.”  Others say that the spiritual beatitude above, and the contortions of the afflicted boy below, present a shocking contrast.  Others sneer at the little hillock or platform which they suppose is to stand for Mount Tabor, think the group above profane, and the group below horrible.  Such as these, with a courage quite superior to all artistic criticism, and undazzled by the accumulated fame of five centuries, venture on a fiat which reminds one of nothing so much as Voltaire’s ridicule of Hamlet, and his denunciation of that barbare, that imbecile de Shakespeare, who would not write so as to be appreciated by a French critic.

Now, in looking at the Transfiguration (and I hope the reader, if the original be far off, will at least have a good print before him while going over these following remarks), we must bear in mind that it is not an historical but a devotional picture—­that the intention of the painter was not to represent a scene, but to excite religious feelings by expressing, so far as painting might do it, a very sublime idea, which it belongs to us to interpret.

I can best accomplish this, perhaps, by putting down naturally my own impressions, when I last had the opportunity of studying this divine picture.

If we remove to a certain distance from it, so that the forms shall become vague, indistinct, and only the masses of colour and the light and shade perfectly distinguishable, we shall see that the picture is indeed divided as if horizontally, the upper half being all light, and the lower half comparatively all dark.  As we approach nearer, step by step, we behold above, the radiant figure of the Saviour floating in mid air, with arms outspread, garments of transparent light, glorified visage upturned as in rapture, and the hair