Ancient Wisdom and the Heralding of the Christ Impulse

Of the other pictures of Raphael, it must be said that whereas nothing has remained of what cardinals and popes did for humanly at that time, Raphael's work is only today becoming a vital force. How little Raphael was understood in recent times is shown by the fact that Goethe, when visiting Dresden, did not admire the Sistine Madonna, having heard from the official at the Museum—and he was only expressing the general opinion of the day—that there was something commonplace about the facial expression of the Child Jesus, that the two Angels at the bottom of the picture could only have been added by some dauber, that the Madonna herself could not be the work of Raphael, but must have been painted over. If we look through the whole of eighteenth-century literature, we shall find hardly anything about Raphael; even Voltaire does not mention him.