[Footnote 184: _Quarterly Review_, No. cxxxi. pp. 20, 25, 32, 42.]
Between these great masters no parallel can be fairly drawn, and had they wrought in the same town they would seldom have been placed in rivalry. But belonging to different states, and heading the antagonist schools of Rome and Florence, the sectional spirit of Italy has placed them in contrast, and has adopted their names as watchwords of local jealousy. In truth, Raffaele's advancement in anatomical accuracy was a necessary consequence of the growing naturalism of his time; and the improvement could not fail to develop the breadth of his pencil, as well as to enlarge the sphere of his compositions. The absolute amelioration of his works, after he settled at Rome, was therefore inevitable from the spirit of the age acting upon a genius not yet matured. That spirit Michael Angelo exaggerated rather than embodied; and to the purer taste of his rival many of his productions must have been beacons rather than models. There is, indeed, some truth, with much malice, in the sarcasm of Pietro Aretino, that the former painted porters, the latter gentlemen. Induced, perhaps, by some such idle sneer, Raffaele executed his Isaiah, to prove that the new manner was not beyond his grasp; but this, his first, and fortunately his last work, in which a direct imitation of the terrible Florentine is discernible, is now the least admired of his mural paintings; and some portion of its Michael Angelesque character has even been attributed to the after-restorations of Daniele di Volterra. The Poetry in the Stanze and the frescoes in the church of La Pace, which he has been supposed to have borrowed from the same source, are traced by more recent critics to works of Andrea l'Ingegno at Perugia and Assisi. After these observations, it is scarcely requisite to notice the remark of Vasari regarding the opportunity stealthily afforded to Raffaele by Bramante for plagiarising from his rival's gigantic creations on the roof of the Cappella Sistina. The casual manner in which the allusion is made does not warrant its being taken up, as it has been, in the light of a charge against the honour both of Sanzio and his friend; and even had it been so intended by the Florentine, various circumstances, besides the high character of those inculpated, are sufficient to negative the charge. If Raffaele followed Buonarroti's manner, it must be admitted that he alone did so without thereby deteriorating his own. Nor ought we to forget that most critics by whom this question is handled have merely repeated the loose views of the biographer of Arezzo, whose great aim it was to prove that the excellences of Sanzio were all borrowed from his Florentine contemporaries.