ABSTRACT
The researches which have been made in Italy for worthy productions of art, anterior to Raffaello, have placed several works by his father in an honourable position on the interesting list. Raffaello had begun in the Vatican with a selection of subjects derived from a class of things or ideas, conventional, symbolical, or allegorical, equally adapted as paintings to all times and places. Thus, in the subject called the Miracle of Bolsena, Raffaello has, in the representation of a circumstance referred to the year 1264, under the pontificate of Urban IV., alluded to the new heresies which in his time began to agitate the church as to the mystery of the real presence. Raffaello had completed but half the works of his second hall in the Vatican, when he lost Bramante, who had introduced him to the pontifical court.
