That ancient division between classical and romantic art, which has usually served to reveal by which forces works of art are created, or else to describe formal and spiritual dimensions in those works once they exist, might also be invoked, in the case of great art, to characterize the nature of its influence upon succeeding generations. Nowhere in all of art is this more true than in the case of Michelangelo and Raphael, since both men have had an incalculable effect upon posterity, although the nature and basis of their respective influence have differed considerably. To speak in blunt and imperfect generalities, there is a sense in which, if Raphael had never existed, another artist could well have emerged, even if only after several generations, capable of bringing painting to that same perfection of which Raphael has been and will always be the paragon. The idea of progress in art, as a criterion of excellence, was relegated long ago and with good reason to the dustbin of the history of ideas; but, even if this notion will not explain why Raphael is such a great painter, it remains essential to an understanding of his origins and influence. For there can be no doubt that it was he who, by the almost universal consent of those to whom it mattered most, gave the definitive answers to those questions that artists had been asking since the time of Giotto two hundred years earlier. But for this very reason, he is something