PARNASSUS

Raphael was but twenty-five years old when he was bidden adorn a room in the Vatican palace, and he made the four walls answer to four divisions in the ceiling, just as afterward in the Heliodorus room. The four divisions in the ceiling were filled with four figures, representing Theology, Poetry, Philosophy, and Justice. Beneath Poetry was this large, full design of Parnassus.

 

Parnassus, in the old Greek myth, was the mountain on which the muses were wont to meet, and here Apollo had his chief seat. Here, in the fancy of the ancients, the poets and historians and dramatists came to draw inspiration. So Raphael has made a great company of gods and goddesses, and ancient and modern poets.

By means of the accompanying diagram, all the figures in the composition can be made out.

As it is an imaginary scene, Raphael was free to bring together poets of different ages and countries, grouping them by the natural association of one with another. In this mythic realm time and space are as nothing, and the poets are united in the higher fellowship of the inspired imagination.

It is interesting to note how the painter has brought them together. Apollo, of course, as the god of poetry and music, occupies the central position, seated beneath some laurel trees, near the sacred fountain of Hippocrene, with the nine Muses circling about him. Apollo is always spoken of as playing the lyre, but Raphael gives him a violin, because the action in playing that instrument is so graceful. Some think also he meant to pay a compliment to a famous violinist of that day.

Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, rests for a moment the long trumpet whose epic strains are wont to stir the courage of men. Polymnia, the muse of sacred poetry, leans upon the lyre whose vibrant strings thrill the gentler emotions of faith and love.

Blind old Homer advances chanting the adventures of the Greek heroes, and an eager youth writes down the verses. Behind him are Virgil and Dante, and Virgil seems to be calling on Dante to listen to Apollo.

Another group shows Pindar, a very aged figure, reciting his impassioned odes to Horace and another poet, who listen with admiration. Plautus and Terence, two writers of Latin comedy, walk together in pleasant companionship.

It was not an easy matter to dispose of the many figures and groups in a space cut into, as this wall is, by a window, but how free and how natural is the arrangement! It was among the first great paintings which Raphael executed in the Vatican, and the grace and harmony which mark his later works are here shown.

The picture is interesting also as another illustration of the great revival of learning which took place in Raphael's day. The old literature of Greece and Rome had been rediscovered. For centuries it had lain like a buried city, forgotten under the ignorance and the fighting of the Middle Ages. Now it was brought to light, and the recovered treasure was the common possession of Italy, not indeed so much of the plain people as of the learned men and the artists.

Raphael, as an artist, took delight in the statues which had been found, and the other signs of Greek and Roman art; but it is not to be supposed that he would know Homer and Virgil and Horace and Pindar and Sappho at first hand. He had, however, friends among the learned men, who could tell him of the treasures of classic literature, and his imagination was quick to seize this material and adapt it to artistic purposes.