Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great

Raphael's father followed the boy's mother when the lad was eleven years old. We know the tender, poetic love this father had for the child, and we realize somewhat of the mystical mingling in the man's heart of the love for the woman dead and her child alive. Reverencing the mother's wish that the boy should be an artist, Giovanni Sanzio, proud of his delicate and spiritual beauty, took the lad to visit all the other artists in the vicinity. They also visited the ducal palace, built by Federigo the Second, and lingered there for hours, viewing the paintings, statuary, carvings, tapestries and panelings.

The palace still stands, and is yet one of the most noble in Italy, vying in picturesqueness with those marble piles that line the Grand Canal at Venice. We know that Giovanni Sanzio contribut