ADVERTISEMENT. FOR more than three centuries the names of MICHEL ANGELO and of RAFFAELLO DA URBINO have been inseparably associated, not only in the glowing thoughts of all painters, of all lovers of art, of all venerators of intellectual greatness, but also in the general traditions and ideas of the masses. At the present moment, therefore, when there is spreading throughout the country so vivid a desire to attain a knowledge of the imitative arts, it was conceived that it would be doing the state some service to publish in a popular form lives of the two men who may be emphatically described as creators of the revival of Art. A critical biography of Michel Angelo, of a wholly satisfactory nature, already existed, from the pen, well known as a most competent one, of Mr. Duppa. His work, accordingly, is here reproduced entire, with the single difference that I have translated the Italian extracts which he retained in their original form. Of Raffaello, no life, in any degree commensurate with so noble a theme, existed in our language. We, therefore, among the foreign biographies of the great Urbinese, adopted that of M. de Quincy, a work which has received the sanction of all continental Europe. The Edition from which I have translated is the third Paris impression, corrected in many points from the Italian version of Signor Longhena, and in other respects carefully revised by the author. WILLIAM HAZLITT. |