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ANTIQUE STATUES. 207
rest, until the good name of the Bithynian youth should
be cleared. This message the pilgrim bore to Raphael,
who was then engaged on the Chigian chapel in the
church of Santa Maria del Popolo. Thus ripened a
thought that Raphael long had cherished, to christen
Antinous, consecrate his beauty, and bestow on the
youth who had given up himself, a place in the venera-
tion of those who in Christ adore the mystery of self-
sacrifice, and of the life eternal won by self-sacrifice.
And so in Raphael the bold plan was conceived, of mak-
ing the Chigian chapel a temple to Antinous, under the
name of the prophet Jonah.
As Antinous, by voluntary death, would save the
Roman ship of state and its master, so in the storm had
Jonah rescued vessel and crew, when he said :
" take me
up, and cast me forth into the sea." And as Jonah, after
" the waters had compassed him about, the depth closed
him round about, and the weeds were wrapped about his
head," was restored to the light of day, and became to
the Christians a sign of the resurrection, so grew Anti-
nous up out of the depths, in the cup of the lotus-flower,
and flew towards immortality—to the heathen, a type of
the imperishable in man.
So was the heathen allegory knit with the Christian,
and Jonah, under the pencil of Raphael became, not the
aged, long-bearded prophet, clothed in a mantle, but the
youthfully fair, nude pagan Antinous, now free from
all pain, and rejoicing that life had vanquished death.
As such, has he been seen for more than three centuries,
in the church by the side of the Porta del Popolo.
The suggestive and winning tradition of Eros and
Psyche, also made famous by Raphael, is in its classic
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