Raphael (Illustrated)

""And I tell you that to paint one beautiful woman, I should need to see several beautiful women, and to have you with me to choose the best,"" wrote Raphael, then at the zenith of his fame and good fortune, to his life-long friend Count Baldassare Castiglione, who—the10 ideal courtier himself—has given the world that immortal monument of Renaissance culture, the Book of the Courtier. In penning these lines the prince of painters intended, perhaps, no more than a pretty compliment to one wh...