'Descend from Heav'n Urania': Milton's Paradise Lost and Raphael's Cycle in the Stanza della Segnatura

The notion that a ceiling, or a wall fresco, or a while room may illustrate and develop a coherent intellectual idea may appear unfamiliar to students of literature, this book argues that the work of the learned and harmonious Raphael that struck the deepest response in Milton as a humanist and religious poet.