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see also collection:
Raphael
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Sistine Chapel
papal chapel in the Vatican Palace that was erected in 1473–81
by the architect Giovanni dei Dolci for Pope Sixtus IV (hence its name). It is
famous for its Renaissance frescoes by Michelangelo.
The Sistine Chapel is a rectangular brick building with six arched windows on
each of the two main (or side) walls and a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The chapel's
exterior is drab and unadorned, but its interior walls and ceiling are decorated
with frescoes by many Florentine Renaissance masters. The frescoes on the side
walls of the chapel were painted from 1481 to 1483. On the north wall are six
frescoes depicting events from the life of Christ as painted by Perugino,
Pinturicchio, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandajo, and Cosimo Rosselli. On
the south wall are six other frescoes depicting events from the life of Moses by
Perugino, Pinturicchio, Botticelli, Domenico and Benedetto Ghirlandajo, Rosselli,
Luca Signorelli, and Bartolomeo della Gatta. Above these works, smaller frescoes
between the windows depict various popes. For great ceremonial occasions the
lowest portions of the side walls were covered with a series of tapestries
depicting events from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. These were
designed by Raphael and woven in 1515–19 at Brussels.
The most important artworks in the chapel are the frescoes by Michelangelo on
the ceiling and on the west wall behind the altar. The frescoes on the ceiling,
collectively known as the Sistine Ceiling, were commissioned by Pope Julius II
in 1508 and were painted by Michelangelo in the years from 1508 to 1512. They
depict incidents and personages from the Old Testament. The “Last Judgment”
fresco on the west wall was painted by Michelangelo for Pope Paul III in the
period from 1534 to 1541. These two gigantic frescoes are among the greatest
achievements of Western painting. A 10-year-long cleaning and restoration of the
Sistine Ceiling completed in 1989 removed several centuries' accumulation of
dirt, smoke, and varnish. Cleaning and restoration of the “Last Judgment” was
completed in 1994.
As the pope's own chapel, the Sistine Chapel is the site of the principal papal
ceremonies and is used by the Sacred College of Cardinals for their election of
a new pope when there is a vacancy.
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Raphael
Encyclopaedia Britannica
born April 6, 1483, Urbino, Duchy of Urbino [Italy]
died April 6, 1520, Rome, Papal States [Italy]
Italian in full Raffaello Sanzio master painter and architect of the Italian
High Renaissance. Raphael is best known for his Madonnas and for his large
figure compositions in the Vatican in Rome. His work is admired for its clarity
of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the
Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.
Early years at Urbino.
Raphael was the son of Giovanni Santi and Magia di Battista Ciarla;
his mother died in 1491. His father was, according to the
16th-century artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari, a painter “of no
great merit.” He was, however, a manof culture who was in constant
contact with the advanced artistic ideas current at the court of
Urbino. He gave his son his first instruction in painting, and,
before his death in 1494, when Raphael was 11, he had introduced the
boy to humanistic philosophy at the court.
Urbino had become a centre of culture during the rule of Duke
Federico da Montefeltro, who encouraged the arts and attracted the
visits of men of outstanding talent, including Donato Bramante,
Piero della Francesca, and Leon Battista Alberti, to his court.
Although Raphael would be influenced by major artists in Florence
and Rome, Urbino constituted the basis for all his subsequent
learning. Furthermore, the cultural vitality of the city probably
stimulated the exceptional precociousness of the young artist, who,
even at the beginning of the 16th century, when he was scarcely 17
years old, already displayed an extraordinary talent.
Apprenticeship at Perugia.
The date of Raphael's arrival in Perugia is not known, but several
scholars place it in 1495. The first record of Raphael's activity as
a painter is found there in a document of Dec. 10, 1500, declaring
that the young painter, by then called a “master,” was commissioned
to help paint an altarpiece to be completed by Sept. 13, 1502. It is
clear from this that Raphael had already given proof of his mastery,
somuch so that between 1501 and 1503 he received a rather important
commission—to paint the “Coronation of the Virgin” for the Oddi
Chapel in the church of San Francesco, Perugia (and now in the
Vatican Museum, Rome). The great Umbrian master Pietro Perugino was
executing the frescoes in the Collegio del Cambio at Perugia between
1498 and 1500, enabling Raphael, as a member of his workshop, to
acquire extensive professional knowledge.
In addition to this practical instruction, Perugino's calmly
exquisite style also influenced Raphael. The “Giving of the Keys to
St. Peter,” painted in 1481–82 by Perugino for the Sistine Chapel of
the Vatican Palace in Rome, inspired Raphael's first major work,
“The Marriage of the Virgin” (1504; Brera Gallery, Milan).
Perugino's influence is seen in the emphasis on perspectives, in the
graded relationships between the figures and the architecture, and
in the lyrical sweetness of the figures. Nevertheless, even in this
early painting, it is clear that Raphael's sensibility was different
from his teacher's. The disposition of the figures is less rigidly
related to the architecture, and the disposition of each figure in
relation to the others is more informal and animated. The sweetness
of the figures and the gentle relation between them surpasses
anything in Perugino's work.
Three small paintings done by Raphael shortly after “The Marriage of
the Virgin”—“Vision of a Knight,” “Three Graces,” and “St.
Michael”—are masterful examples of narrative painting, showing, as
well as youthful freshness, a maturing ability to control the
elements of his own style. Although he had learned much from
Perugino, Raphael by late 1504 needed other models to work from; it
is clear that his desire for knowledge was driving him to look
beyond Perugia.
Move to Florence.
Vasari vaguely recounts that Raphael followed the Perugian painter
Bernardino Pinturicchio to Siena and then went on to Florence, drawn
there by accounts of the work that Leonardo da Vinci and
Michelangelo were undertaking in that city. By the autumn of 1504
Raphael had certainly arrived in Florence. It is not known if this
was his first visit to Florence, but, as his works attest, it was
about 1504 that he first came into substantial contact with this
artistic civilization, which reinforced all the ideas he had already
acquired and also opened to him new and broader horizons. Vasari
records that he studied not only the works of Leonardo,
Michelangelo, and Fra Bartolomeo, who were the masters of the High
Renaissance, but also “the old things of Masaccio,” a pioneer of the
naturalism that marked the departure of the early Renaissance from
the Gothic.
Still, his principal teachers in Florence were Leonardo and
Michelangelo. Many of the works that Raphael executed in the years
between 1505 and 1507, most notably a great series of Madonnas
including “The Madonna of the Goldfinch” (c. 1505; Uffizi Gallery,
Florence), the “Madonna del Prato” (c. 1505; Kunsthistorisches
Museum, Vienna), the “Esterházy Madonna” (c. 1505–07; Museum of Fine
Arts, Budapest), and “La Belle Jardinière” (c. 1507; Louvre Museum,
Paris), are marked by the influence of Leonardo, who since 1480 had
been making great innovations in painting. Raphael was particularly
influenced by Leonardo's“Madonna and Child with St. Anne” pictures,
which are marked by an intimacy and simplicity of setting uncommon
in 15th-century art. Raphael learned the Florentine method of
building up his composition in depth with pyramidal figure masses;
the figures are grouped as a single unit, but each retains its own
individuality and shape. A new unity of composition and suppression
of inessentials distinguishes the works he painted in Florence.
Raphael also owed much to Leonardo's lighting techniques; he made
moderate use of Leonardo's chiaroscuro (i.e., strong contrast
between light and dark), and he was especially influenced by his
sfumato (i.e., use of extremely fine, soft shading instead of line
to delineate forms and features). Raphael went beyond Leonardo,
however, in creating new figure types whose round, gentle faces
reveal uncomplicated and typically human sentiments but raised to a
sublime perfection and serenity.
In 1507 Raphael was commissioned to paint the “Deposition of Christ”
that is now in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. In this work, it is
obvious that Raphael set himself deliberately to learn from
Michelangelo the expressive possibilities of human anatomy. But
Raphael differed from Leonardo and Michelangelo, who were both
painters of dark intensity and excitement, in that he wished to
develop a calmer and more extroverted style that would serve as a
popular, universally accessible form of visual communication.
Last years in Rome.
Raphael was called to Rome toward the end of 1508 by Pope Julius II
at the suggestion of the architect Donato Bramante. At this time
Raphael was little known in Rome, but the young man soon made a deep
impression on the volatile Julius and the papal court, and his
authority as a master grew day by day. Raphael was endowed with a
handsome appearance and great personal charm in addition to his
prodigious artistic talents, and he eventually became so popular
that he was called “the prince of painters.”
Raphael spent the last 12 years of his short life in Rome. They were
years of feverish activity and successive masterpieces. His first
task in the city was to paint a cycle of frescoes in a suite of
medium-sized rooms in the Vatican papal apartments in which Julius
himself lived and worked; these rooms are known simply as the Stanze.
The Stanza della Segnatura (1508–11) and Stanza d'Eliodoro (1512–14)
were decorated practically entirely by Raphael himself; themurals in
the Stanza dell'Incendio (1514–17), though designed by Raphael, were
largely executed by his numerous assistants and pupils.
The decoration of the Stanza della Segnatura was perhaps Raphael's
greatest work. Julius II was a highly cultured man who surrounded
himself with the most illustrious personalities of the Renaissance.
He entrusted Bramante with the construction of a new basilica of St.
Peter to replace the original 4th-century church; he called upon
Michelangeloto execute his tomb and compelled him against his will
to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; and, sensing the
genius of Raphael, he committed into his hands the interpretation of
the philosophical scheme of the frescoes in the Stanza della
Segnatura. This theme was the historical justification of the power
of the Roman Catholic church through Neoplatonic philosophy.
The four main fresco walls in the Stanza della Segnatura are
occupied by the “Disputa” and the “School of Athens” on the larger
walls and the “Parnassus” and “Cardinal Virtues” on the smaller
walls. The two most important of these frescoes are the “Disputa”
and the “School of Athens.” The “Disputa,” showing a celestial
vision of God and his prophets and apostles above a gathering of
representatives, past and present, of the Roman Catholic church,
equates through its iconography the triumph of the church and the
triumph of truth. The “School of Athens” is a complex allegory of
secular knowledge, or philosophy, showing Plato and Aristotle
surrounded by philosophers, past and present, in a splendid
architectural setting; it illustrates the historical continuity of
Platonic thought. The “School of Athens” is perhaps the most famous
of all Raphael's frescoes, and one of the culminating artworks of
the High Renaissance. Here Raphael fills an ordered and stable space
with figures in a rich variety of poses and gestures, which he
controls in order to make one group of figures lead to the next in
an interweaving and interlocking pattern, bringing the eye to the
central figures of Plato and Aristotle at the converging point of
the perspectival space. The space in which the philosophers
congregate is defined by the pilasters and barrel vaults of a great
basilica that is based on Bramante's design for the new St. Peter's
in Rome. The general effect of the fresco is one of majestic calm,
clarity, and equilibrium.
About the same time, probably in 1511, Raphael painted a more
secular subject, the “Triumph of Galatea” in the Villa Farnesina in
Rome; this work was perhaps the High Renaissance's most successful
evocation of the living spirit of classical antiquity. Meanwhile,
Raphael's decoration of the papal apartments continued after the
death of Julius in 1513 and into the succeeding pontificate of Leo X
until 1517. In contrast to the generalized allegories in the Stanza
della Segnatura, the decorations in the second room, the Stanza
d'Eliodoro, portray specific miraculous events in the history of the
Christian church. The four principal subjects are “The Expulsion of
Heliodorus from the Temple,” “The Miracle at Bolsena,” “The
Liberation of St. Peter,” and “Leo I Halting Attila.” These frescoes
are deeper and richer in colour than are those in the earlier room,
and they display a new boldness on Raphael's part in both their
dramatic subjects and their unusual effects of light. “The
Liberation of St. Peter,” for example, is a night scene and contains
three separate lighting effects—moonlight, the torch carried by a
soldier, and the supernatural light emanating from an angel. Raphael
delegated his assistants to decorate the third room, the Stanze
dell'Incendio, with the exception of one fresco, the “Fire in the
Borgo,” in which his pursuit of more dramatic pictorial incidents
and his continuing study of the male nude are plainly apparent.
The Madonnas that Raphael painted in Rome show him turning away from
the serenity and gentleness of his earlier works in order to
emphasize qualities of energetic movement and grandeur. His “Alba
Madonna” (1508; National Gallery, Washington, D.C.) epitomizes the
serene sweetness of the Florentine Madonnas but shows a new maturity
of emotional expression and supreme technical sophistication in the
poses of the figures. It was followed by the “Madonna di Foligno”
(1510; Vatican Museum) and the “Sistine Madonna” (1513;
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), which show both the richness of colour and
new boldness in compositional invention typical of Raphael's Roman
period. Some of his other late Madonnas, such as the “Madonna of
Francis I” (Louvre), are remarkable for their polished elegance.
Besides his other accomplishments, Raphael became the most important
portraitist in Rome during the first two decades of the 16th
century. He introduced new types of presentation and new
psychological situations for his sitters, as seen in the portrait of
“Leo X with Two Cardinals” (1517–19; Pitti Palace, Florence).
Raphael's finest work in the genre is perhaps the “Portrait of
Baldassare Castiglione” (1516; Louvre), a brilliant and arresting
character study.
Leo X commissioned Raphael to design 10 large tapestries to hang on
the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Seven of the ten cartoons
(full-size preparatory drawings) were completed by1516, and the
tapestries woven after them were hung in place in the chapel by
1519. The tapestries themselves are still in the Vatican, while
seven of Raphael's original cartoons are in the British royal
collection and are on view atthe Victoria and Albert Museum in
London. These cartoons represent “Christ's Charge to Peter,” “The
Miraculous Draught of Fishes,” “The Death of Ananias,” “The Healing
of the Lame Man,” “The Blinding of Elymas,” “The Sacrifice at Lystra,”
and “St. Paul Preaching at Athens.” In these pictures Raphael
created prototypes that would influence the European tradition of
narrative history painting for centuriesto come. The cartoons
display Raphael's keen sense of drama, his use of gestures and
facial expressions to portray emotion, and his incorporation of
credible physical settings from both the natural world and that of
ancient Roman architecture.
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The School of Athens
Raphael's fresco contains
portraits of many classical philosophers.
In the center stand Plato and Aristotle, the two great philosophers
of antiquity. To their left
Socrates is seen in argument with several young men. The old man
seated on the steps is Diogenes. Other philosophical figures are
identifiable, including Pythagoras, shown bottom left, explaining
his proportion system on a slate, and, on the extreme right,
Ptolemy, depicted contemplating a celestial globe.
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Plato and Aristotle
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Pythagoras
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Socrates
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Epicurus
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Heraclitus
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Diogenes
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Euclid
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Ptolemy and Zoroaster
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Raphael and Sodoma
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While he was at work in the Stanza della Segnatura, Raphael also did
his first architectural work, designing the church of Sant' Eligio
degli Orefici. In 1513 the banker Agostino Chigi, whose Villa
Farnesina Raphael had already decorated, commissioned him to design
and decorate his funerary chapel in the church of Santa Maria del
Popolo. In 1514 Leo X chose him to work on the basilica of St.
Peter's alongside Bramante; and when Bramante died later that year,
Raphael assumed the direction of the work, transforming the plans of
the church from a Greek, or radial, to a Latin, or longitudinal,
design.
Raphael was also a keen student of archaeology and of ancient
Greco-Roman sculpture, echoes of which are apparent in his paintings
of the human figure during the Roman period. In 1515 Leo X put him
in charge of the supervision of the preservation of marbles bearing
valuable Latin inscriptions; two years later he was appointed
commissioner of antiquities for the city, and he drew up an
archaeological map of Rome. Raphael had by this time been put in
charge of virtually all of the papacy's various artistic projects in
Rome, involving architecture, paintings and decoration, and the
preservation of antiquities.
Raphael's last masterpiece is the “Transfiguration” (commissioned in
1517), an enormous altarpiece that was unfinished at his death and
completed by his assistant Giulio Romano. It now hangs in the
Vatican Museum. “The Transfiguration” is a complex work that
combines extreme formal polish and elegance of execution with an
atmosphere of tension and violence communicated by the agitated
gestures of closely crowded groups of figures. It shows a new
sensibility that is like the prevision of a new world, turbulent and
dynamic; in its feeling and composition it inaugurated the Mannerist
movement and tends toward an expression that may even be called
Baroque.
Raphael died on his 37th birthday. His funeral mass was celebrated
at the Vatican, his “Transfiguration” was placed at the head of the
bier, and his body was buried in the Pantheon in Rome.
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see also collection:
Raphael
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RAPHAEL'S VATICAN STANZE
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Raphael, School of
Athens,
Stanza delta
Segnatura, Vatican
City, 1509-10.
The
new frescos for the
Vatican apartments
replaced older ones
by Andrea del
Castagno and Piero
delta Francesca
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Raphael's decoration of the Vatican apartments for Pope
Julius II began with the Stanza della Segnatura. In a cycle about
the human intellect that asserts the ideals of goodness, truth, and
beauty, the artist included his School of Athens, with its
theme of philosophy, and Disputation over the Holy Sacrament,
with its theme of theology. The former is a summary of the history
of philosophical thought. It centres on the figures of Aristotle and
Plato, who are depicted in the centre of a large building
reminiscent of both classical basilicas and the new St Peter's.
Raphael tried to achieve complete balance in the composition,
the variety of figures shown forming a representation of the ideal
relationship between the different philosophical beliefs. In the
later, and more dramatic, Stanza d'Eliodoro, painted between 1511
and 1514, the theme is divine intervention on behalf of the Church.
In this work, Raphael showed quite different influences. There are,
for instance, hints of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel in the weight
and build of the figures, while touches of Venetian art, especially
that of Sebastiano del Piombo, are also evident. These more dynamic
works depend on a stronger use of light and colour, typified by the
drama of the Expulsion of Hehodorus.
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see also collection:
Raphael
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Influences on Raphael
After the complexities of Leonardo and Michelangelo, it is a relief
to find Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio, 1483-1520), a genius no less than
they, but one whose daily ways were those of other men. He was born
in the small town of Urbino, an artistic center, and received his
earliest training from his father. Later, his father sent him to
Pietro Perugino (active 1478-1523) who, like Verrocchio and
Ghirlandaio, was an artist of considerable gifts. But while Leonardo
and Michelangelo quickly outgrew their teachers and show no later
trace of influence, Raphael
had a precocious talent right from the beginning and was an innate
absorber of influences. Whatever he saw, he took possession of,
always growing by what was taught to him. An early Raphael can look
very like a Perugino. In fact, Perugino's Crucifixion with the
Virgin, St. John, St. Jerome, and St. Mary Magdalene was thought
to be by Raphael until evidence proved it was given to the church of
San Gimigniano in 1497, when Raphael was only 14. It is undoubtedly
a Perugino, calmly emotional, and pious rather than passionate. A
fascinating context for this scene of quiet faith is the notorious
unbelief on the part of the artist, who was described by Yasari as
an atheist. He painted what would be acceptable, not what he felt to
be true, and this may account for the lack of real emotive impact.
Early Raphael
There are still echoes of the gentle Perugino in an early Raphael
like the diminutive St. George and the Dragon, painted when
he was in his early twenties; the little praying princess is very
Peruginesque. But there is a fire in the knight and his intelligent
horse, and a nasty vigor in the convincing dragon that would always
be beyond Perugino's skill. Even the horse's tail is electric, and
the saint's mantle flies wide as he speeds to the kill.
Raphael spent his first sojourn in Florence (1504-08) to sublime
purpose. At that time Leonardo and Michelangelo were both working
there, and as a result, Raphael adopted new working methods and
techniques -particularly influenced by Leonardo — and his paintings
took on a more vigorous graphic energy. We may think we see a hint
of what he took from Leonardo in a work like the Small Cowper
Madonna, with its softness of contour and perfection of balance.
Both faces, the Virgin's almost smiling, almost praying, wholly
wrapped up in her Child, and that of the Child, wholly at ease with
His Mother, dreamily looking out at us with abstracted sweetness,
have that inwardness we see in Leonardo, but made firm and
unproblematic. Behind the seated figures we see a tranquil rural
landscape with a church perched on a hill.
Raphael's later work
Raphael returned to the subject of the Madonna and Child several
times, each time in an intimate, gentle composition. The Alba
Madonna, on the other hand, has a Michelangelic heroism about
it; tender as always in Raphael, but also heavy; masses wonderfully
composed in tondo form; a crescendo of emotion that finds its
fulfillment in the watchful face of Mary. The world stretches away
on either side, centered on this trinity of figures, and the
movement sweeps graciously onward until it reaches the farthest fold
of Mary's cloaked elbow. Then it floods back, with her bodily
inclination toward the left, and the meaning is perfectly contained:
love is never stationary, it is given and returned. Raphael's life
was short, but while he lived he was one of those geniuses who
continually evolve and develop. He had an extraordinary capacity
(like, though greater than, Picasso's) to respond to every movement
in the art world, and to subsume it within his own work.
Since Vasari described the picture commissioned by Bindo
Altoviti as "his portrait when young," historians have liked to
think that this radiant youth was Raphael himself. He was indeed
said to be unusually handsome, pensive, and fair, which is exactly
what this portrait shows us. But it is now agreed that it is Bindo
when young, and since he was at this time a mere 22 (and Raphael 33,
with only five years left to him), this is not an "imagined" youth
but a real boy who takes up so self-conscious a stance before the
painter.
Raphael is one of the most acute of all portraitists, effortlessly
cleaving through the external defenses of his sitter, yet
courteously colluding with whatever image the ego would seek to have
portrayed. This duality, looking beneath the surface and yet
remaining wholly respectful of the surface, gives an additional
layer of meaning to all his portraits. We see, and we know things
that we do not see; we are helped to encounter rather than to
evaluate.
Bindo Altoviti was beautiful, successful (as a banker), and rich-
rather like Raphael himself. There may have been some feeling of
fellowship in the work, as the noble countenance is sensitively
fleshed out for us. Half the face is in shadow, as if to allow the
sitter his mystery, his maturing, his private destiny. The lips are
full and sensual, balanced by the deep-set eyes with their
confrontational stare, almost defiant. The ruffled shirt is half
covered by the young man's locks, calculatedly casual, at odds in
their dandyish profusion with the plain beret and the rich but
simple doublet. He holds a darkened hand dramatically to his breast,
maybe to show off the ring, maybe to indicate psychic ease.
But Raphael has not given him the real world for his setting. Bindo
Aldoviti stands in a nowhere place of luminous green, outside the
scope of time in his eternal youth, fearless because he is protected
by art from human uncertainties.
There is an aptness in the areas of darkness in which the great
doublet sleeve loses itself. For all his debonaire poise, this is a
young man threatened. For the viewer who knows how short Raphael's
own life was to be, the thought that this might be a self-portrait
is seductively plausible. There is a sense in which every portrait
is one of the self, since we never escape our own life enough to see
with divine vision what is objectively there: this shows us both
men, painter and banker, "when young."
Raphael is out of favor today; his work seems too perfect, too
faultless for our slipshod age. Yet these great icons of human
beauty can never fail to stir us: his Vatican murals can stand
fearlessly beside the Sistine ceiling. The School of Athens,
for example, monumentally immortalizing the great philosophers, is
unrivaled in its classic grace. Raphael's huge influence on
successive artists is all the more impressive considering his short
life.
Sister Wendy
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see also collection:
Raphael
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The Alba Madonna
Like Bellini, Raphael became a Madonniere - a painter of Madonnas.
Depicted like Bellini's Madonna of the Meadow in an open landscape,
The Alba Madonna is an example of the Renaissance "Madonna of
Humility" tradition. However, all comparison with Bellini ends here,
and it is the influence of Michelangelo that is more evident in The
Alba Madonna, not least in its tondo format - derived from
Michelangelo's Holy Family (c. 1503), which Raphael saw in Rome.
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Raphael
The Alba Madonna
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Christ child
The Alba Madonna is not as representative of Raphael's treatment
of the subject as the Small Cowper Madonna, which
exhibits all the sensual warmth of human love that exists between a
mother and her baby. Here the Christ Child is depicted as a kind of
baby crusader -upright and courageous, a child with a man's
understanding of the difficulties of human existence. By comparison,
the chubby figure of St. John, dressed in a drab lamb's fleece to
remind us of his future in the wilderness, appears unsophisticated
and truly childlike.
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Heroism
The relatively
close tonal range
and restrained palette
of The Alba Madonna is
perfectly suited to her self-contained, gentle heroism. It is wholly
unlike the rosy glow and brilliant hues of the Small Cowper Madonna.
The Alba Madonna's whole demeanor, as well as her quietly mournful
gaze, expresses dignity, spiritual strength, and solidity. She
meditates
on a small wooden cross that symbolizes Christ's Crucifixion.
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Umbrian countryside
Beyond the statuesque figure of the Madonna, in the open Umbrian
landscape, is a small wood filled with odd, tightly foliaged trees.
Beyond the wood, still farther into the distance, are tiny horsemen.
The activities of the horsemen, too minute to make out, are reduced
almost to nothingness by the giantlike form of the Madonna, her
remote gaze echoing their physical distance and their essential
irrelevance.
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Madonna's foot
The military style of the sandal worn by the Madonna emphasizes her
warriorlike demeanor. Like her Son, she assumes a heroic stance. The
ground on which she sits is sprinkled with small flowers, some in
bloom. The petals are painted delicately over the primary layer of
green earth. The flowers that St. John has gathered are anemones
that grow behind him. Around the picture from where he kneels are a
white dandelion, what could be another anemone, a plantain, a
violet, and three lilies, not yet in bloom.
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see also collection:
Raphael
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Queen of Angels and Men
The Sistine Madonna and Dostoyevsky
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Raphael
The
Sistine Madonna (detail)
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Angels bend to you in solemn ceremony and
Saints pray where your foot steps: glorious
Queen of Heaven! To you the lyre of the
spheres resounds, which God has strung.
Your spirit gazes, divine to see, through the
veil of your unfading, blooming figure;
you bear a child of sublime omnipotence,
victor over death and liberator of the world.
August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Sonnet to the Sistine Madonna,
c. 1840
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 Raphael
The
Sistine Madonna
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Visiting Dresden, the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky
(1821—1881) could hardly tear himself away from The
Sistine Madonna. He kept returning to the Gemaldegalerie where
it hung to spend hours in front of it. Vasari, the Founding Father
of art history, said of the artist: "How generous and benevolent
Heaven may on occasion show itself to be by showering one man with
the infinite riches of its treasures, all the grace and rare gifts
otherwise distributed over a long period of time among many
individuals, can be clearly seen in the beauty and grace of
Raphael." Dostoyevsky may have had similar feelings about the
painting and the artist. On his last day in Dresden, he pulled up a
chair in front of the painting so that he might be closer to the
Madonna's face: "What beauty, innocence and sadness in that heavenly
countenance, what humility and suffering in those eyes. Among the
ancient Greeks the powers of the divine were expressed in the
marvellous Venus de Mile; the Italians, however, brought
forth the true Mother of God — the Sistine Madonna." The author of
Crime and Punishment (1866) went so far as to claim that,
compared to this masterpiece, other representations of the Virgin
resemble bakers' wives or other pedestrian, petty-bourgeois women.
A major Italian artist by 1500, Raphael was commissioned at the age
of thirty-nine to work on the design of the new St Peter's in Rome.
The young architect had already painted The Sistine Madonna
for the high altar of San Sisto in Piacenza, where the relics of
Pope Sixtus 11 (martyred in 258) had been kept since the ninth
century. The Sistine Madonna hung in the church until
1753, when it came into the possession of the Prince Elector,
Frederick Augustus II of Saxony. Before Dostoyevsky, German writers,
such as August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Heinrich von Kleist and Franz
Grillparzer, had been enthralled by the painting. The Sistine
Madonna continues to enjoy wide acclaim to this day. In recent
times, advertising and commerce have discovered the irresistible
appeal of the two bored, mischievous angels on the lower edge of the
picture plane. They appear on cups and napkins, letter paper and
lampshades. Putti like these are a type of angel, which made their
first appearance during the Renaissance. Deriving from the Italian
word for "child" or "infant boy", the putto, with his chubby,
sensual cheerfulness, is in the tradition of Bros or Cupid, the god
of love. In ancient writings and representations, Eros was portrayed
as a half-naked boy with wings, while his figure ranged from slim to
plump. The child-like appearance of Italian putti is an expression
of their innocence. In connection with the Virgin, they represent
the immaculate purity of the Queen of angels and men.
K. Reichold, B. Graf
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Raphael
The
Sistine Madonna (detail)
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see collection:
Raphael
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