RAPHAEL The original of our next picture is very small, only seven inches square, yet I hope it will instantly appeal to you.

The name of the artist, Raphael, is perhaps the most familiar of all the names of the Old Masters, mainly, it may be, because he was the painter of the Sistine Madonna, the best known and best loved of Madonnas.
When Raphael drew and painted this picture of the 'Knight's Dream,' about the year 1500, he was himself like a young knight, at the outset of his short and brilliant career.

As a boy he was handsome, gifted, charming.

His nature is said to have been as lovely as his gifts were great, and he passed his short life in a triumphant progress from city to city and court to court, always working hard and always painting so beautifully that he won the admiration of artists, princes, and popes.

His father, Giovanni Santi, was a painter living in the town of Urbino, in Central Italy, but Raphael when quite young went to Perugia to study with the painter Perugino, a native of that town.
Perugia stands upon a high hill, like the hill in the background of the picture of the 'Knight's Dream,' only higher, for from it you can overlook the wide Umbrian plain as far as Assisi--the home of St.
Francis--which lies on the slope of the next mountain.