A great part of the
dignity and importance given to the king is due to the fact that his
head fills one of these angles, and the opposite one contains the hand
of the executioner and the foot by which the living child is held aloft,
and to this point the longest lines of the picture lead. The dead
child and the indifferent mother fill the lower corners. In the middle,
herself only half seen and occupying little space, is the true mother,
and it seems that her explosive energy, as she rushes to the rescue of
her child, has forced all these other figures back to the confines of
the picture. Compare this restless yet subtly balanced composition, full
of oblique lines and violent movement, with the gracious, placid
formality of the "Adam and Eve," and you will have some notion of the
meaning of this gift of design.
[Illustration: Plate 12.--Raphael. "The Judgment of Solomon."
In the Vatican.]
But it is the frescoes on the four walls of this room which are
Raphael's greatest triumphs--the most perfect pieces of monumental
decoration in the world. On the two longer walls, nearly unbroken
lunettes of something over a semicircle, he painted the two great
compositions of Theology and Philosophy known as the "Disputa" and the
"School of Athens." The "Disputa" (Pl.
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