ABSTRACT
With Raphael we temporarily re-enter a world completely different from the disturbing, and disturbingly ‘modern’, personalities of Leonardo and Michelangelo. In him we find no trace of the doubts convulsing the life and mind of Leonardo, or the exasperating, rancorous rage of Michelangelo. Raphael does not even seem to have a human personality as, strangely enough, we associate ‘personality’ with idiosyncratic weakness of character. One is at a loss in capturing and describing what kind of human being Raphael was, in a manner only comparable to Shakespeare or the peculiar hero of the Magic Mountain, Hans Castorp.
