the greatest, most sublime, and most excellent painter that has appeared since the revival of the fine arts, was the son of an indifferent painter named Sanzio, and was born at Urbino on Good Friday 1482. The popes Julius II. and Leo X. who employed him, loaded him with wealth and honour; and it is said that cardinal de St Bibiana had such a value for him, that he offered him his niece in marriage. He had Peter Perugino for his first master; but he immediately surpassed him, and endeavoured to improve by copying the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo. His genius is admired in all his pictures; his contours are free, his ordonnances magnificent, his designs correct, his figures elegant, his expressions lively, his attitudes natural, his heads graceful; in fine, every thing is beautiful, grand, sublime, just, and adorned with graces. These various perfections he derived not only from his excellent abilities, but from his study of antiquity and anatomy; and from the friendship he contracted with Ariosto, who contributed not a little to the improvement of his taste. His pictures are principally to be found in Italy and Paris. That of the Transfiguration, preserved at Rome in the church of St Peter Monterio, passes for his master-piece. He had a handsome person, was well proportioned, and had great sweetness of temper; was polite, affable, and modest. He, however, lived in the utmost splendor; most of the eminent masters of his time were ambitious of working under him; and he never went out without a crowd of artists and others, who followed him purely through respect. He was not only the best painter in the world, but perhaps the best architect too; on which account Leo X. charged him with building St Peter's church at Rome: but he was too much addicted to pleasure, which occasioned his death at 37 years of age. He left a great number of disciples; among whom were Julio Romano, and John Francis Penni, who were his heirs. Many able engravers, as Raimondi, George Mantuan, and Bloemart, engraved after Raphael.