How generous and kind Heaven sometimes proves to be when
it brings together in a single person the boundless riches of its
treasures and all those graces and rare gifts that over a period
of time are usually divided among many individuals can
clearly be seen in the no less excellent than gracious Raphael
Sanzio of Urbino.

He was by nature endowed with all the modesty and kind-
ness that is usually seen in those who, more than others, possess
an innately gentle humanity joined to a beautifully graceful
affability that always showed itself sweet and pleasing with
every kind of person and in every kind of circumstance.
Nature created him as a gift to the world: after having been
vanquished by art in the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti,
it wished to be vanquished through Raphael by both art and
moral habits as well.

And truthfully, most of the artisans up to that time had
received from Nature a certain trace of madness and wildness
which, besides making them unmindful and eccentric, had also
caused them, on many occasions, to reveal inside themselves
the shadow and darkness of vices rather than the clarity and
splendour of those virtues which make men immortal. Hence,
Nature had ample cause, on the other hand, to make clearly
resplendent in Raphael all those rare virtues of mind, accom-
panied by as much grace, study, beauty, modesty, and fine
manners as would have sufficed to cover up any flaw, no
matter how ugly, or any blemish, no matter how large. As a
result, it is safe to say that those who possess as many rare gifts
as were seen in Raphael from Urbino are not simple mortals

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