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WIKIMAG n. 4 - Marzo 2013
Raphael
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Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino[2]
(April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520[3]),
better known simply as Raphael, was an
Italian
painter
and
architect of the
High Renaissance. 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. Together with
Michelangelo and
Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters
of that period.[4]
Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large
workshop, and despite his death at 37, a large body of his work remains.
Many of his works are found in the
Apostolic Palace of
The Vatican, where the frescoed
Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career.
The best known work is
The School of Athens in the Vatican
Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his
work was self-designed, but for the most part executed by the workshop
from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely
influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly
known from his collaborative
printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival
Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when
Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as
the highest models. His career falls naturally into three phases and
three styles, first described by
Giorgio Vasari: his early years in
Umbria,
then a period of about four years (from 1504–1508) absorbing the
artistic traditions of
Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in
Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates.[5]
Urbino
Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father; Christ supported by
two angels, c.1490
Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant Central
Italian city of
Urbino
in the
Marche region,[6]
where his father
Giovanni Santi was court painter to the Duke. The reputation of the
court had been established by
Federico III da Montefeltro, a highly successful
condottiere who had been created
Duke of Urbino by
the Pope—Urbino formed part of the
Papal States—and who died the year before Raphael was born. The
emphasis of Federico's court was rather more literary than artistic, but
Giovanni Santi was a poet of sorts as well as a painter, and had written
a rhymed chronicle of the life of Federico, and both wrote the texts and
produced the decor for
masque-like
court entertainments. His poem to Federico shows him as keen to show
awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and
Early Netherlandish artists as well. In the very small court of
Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the
ruling family than most court painters.[7]
Federico was succeeded by his son
Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who married
Elisabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the ruler of
Mantua,
the most brilliant of the smaller Italian courts for both music and the
visual arts. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary
culture. Growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the
excellent manners and social skills stressed by
Vasari.[8]
Court life in Urbino at just after this period was to become set as the
model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through
Baldassare Castiglione's depiction of it in his classic work
The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. Castiglione moved
to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently
visited, and they became good friends. He became close to other regular
visitors to the court:
Pietro Bibbiena and
Pietro Bembo, both later
cardinals, were already becoming well known as writers, and would be
in Rome during Raphael's period there. Raphael mixed easily in the
highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to
give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not
receive a full
humanistic education however; it is unclear how easily he read
Latin.[9]
Early life and
work
Probable self-portrait drawing by Raphael in his teens
His mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on
August 1, 1494 by his father, who had already remarried. Orphaned at
eleven, Raphael's formal guardian became his only paternal uncle
Bartolomeo, a priest, who subsequently engaged in litigation with his
stepmother. He probably continued to live with his stepmother when not
staying as an apprentice with a master. He had already shown talent,
according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been "a great help to his
father".[10]
A brilliant
self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocious
talent.[11]
His father's workshop continued and, probably together with his
stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very
early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of
Paolo Uccello, previously the court painter (d. 1475), and
Luca Signorelli, who until 1498 was based in nearby
Città di Castello.[12]
According to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the
Umbrian master
Pietro Perugino as an apprentice "despite the tears of his mother".
The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another
source,[13]
and has been disputed — eight was very early for an apprenticeship to
begin. An alternative theory is that he received at least some training
from
Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495.[14]
But most modern historians agree that Raphael at least worked as an
assistant to Perugino from around 1500; the influence of Perugino on
Raphael's early work is very clear: "probably no other pupil of genius
has ever absorbed so much of his master's teaching as Raphael did",
according to
Wölfflin.[15]
Vasari wrote that it was impossible to distinguish between their hands
at this period, but many modern
art historians claim to do better and detect his hand in specific
areas of works by Perugino or his workshop. Apart from stylistic
closeness, their techniques are very similar as well, for example having
paint applied thickly, using an oil varnish medium, in shadows and
darker garments, but very thinly on flesh areas. An excess of resin in
the varnish often causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both
masters.[16]
The Perugino workshop was active in both
Perugia
and
Florence, perhaps maintaining two permanent branches.[17]
Raphael is described as a "master", that is to say fully trained, in
1501.
His first documented work was the
Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint
Nicholas of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between
Perugia and Urbino. Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, who had worked for
his father, was also named in the commission. It was commissioned in
1500 and finished in 1501; now only some cut sections and a preparatory
drawing remain.[18]
In the following years he painted works for other churches there,
including the "Mond
Crucifixion" (about 1503) and the
Brera
Wedding of the Virgin (1504), and for Perugia, such as the
Oddi Altarpiece. He very probably also visited Florence in this
period. These are large works, some in
fresco,
where Raphael confidently marshals his compositions in the somewhat
static style of Perugino. He also painted many small and exquisite
cabinet paintings in these years, probably mostly for the
connoisseurs in the Urbino court, like the
Three Graces and
St. Michael, and he began to paint
Madonnas and portraits.[19]
In 1502 he went to
Siena at
the invitation of another pupil of
Perugino,
Pinturicchio, "being a friend of Raphael and knowing him to be a
draughtsman of the highest quality" to help with the
cartoons,
and very likely the designs, for a fresco series in the
Piccolomini Library in
Siena Cathedral.[20]
He was evidently already much in demand even at this early stage in his
career.
-
-
-
-
Saint George and the Dragon, a small work (29 x
21 cm) for the court of Urbino.
Influence of
Florence
Raphael led a "nomadic" life, working in various centres in Northern
Italy, but spent a good deal of time in Florence, perhaps from about
1504. However, although there is traditional reference to a "Florentine
period" of about 1504-8, he was possibly never a continuous resident
there.[21]
He may have needed to visit the city to secure materials in any case.
There is a letter of recommendation of Raphael, dated October 1504, from
the mother of the next Duke of Urbino to the
Gonfaloniere of Florence: "The bearer of this will be found to be
Raphael, painter of Urbino, who, being greatly gifted in his profession
has determined to spend some time in Florence to study. And because his
father was most worthy and I was very attached to him, and the son is a
sensible and well-mannered young man, on both accounts, I bear him great
love...".[22]
As earlier with Perugino and others, Raphael was able to assimilate
the influence of Florentine art, whilst keeping his own developing
style. Frescos in Perugia of about 1505 show a new monumental quality in
the figures which may represent the influence of
Fra Bartolomeo, who Vasari says was a friend of Raphael. But the
most striking influence in the work of these years is
Leonardo da Vinci, who returned to the city from 1500 to 1506.
Raphael's figures begin to take more dynamic and complex positions, and
though as yet his painted subjects are still mostly tranquil, he made
drawn studies of fighting nude men, one of the obsessions of the period
in Florence. Another drawing is a portrait of a young woman that uses
the three-quarter length pyramidal composition of the just-completed "Mona
Lisa", but still looks completely Raphaelesque. Another of
Leonardo's compositional inventions, the pyramidal Holy Family,
was repeated in a series of works that remain among his most famous
easel paintings. There is a drawing by Raphael in the
Royal Collection of
Leonardo's lost Leda and the Swan, from which he adapted the
contrapposto pose of his own Saint Catherine of Alexandria.[23]
He also perfects his own version of Leonardo's
sfumato
modelling, to give subtlety to his painting of flesh, and develops the
interplay of glances between his groups, which are much less enigmatic
than those of Leonardo. But he keeps the soft clear light of Perugino in
his paintings.[24]
Leonardo was more than thirty years older than Raphael, but
Michelangelo, who was in Rome for this period, was just eight years his
senior. Michelangelo already disliked Leonardo, and in Rome came to
dislike Raphael even more, attributing conspiracies against him to the
younger man.[25]
Raphael would have been aware of his works in Florence, but in his most
original work of these years, he strikes out in a different direction.
His
Deposition of Christ draws on classical
sarcophagi to spread the figures across the front of the picture
space in a complex and not wholly successful arrangement. Wöllflin
detects the influence of the Madonna in Michelangelo's
Doni Tondo in the kneeling figure on the right, but the rest of
the composition is far removed from his style, or that of Leonardo.
Though highly regarded at the time, and much later forcibly removed from
Perugia by the
Borghese, it stands rather alone in Raphael's work. His classicism
would later take a less literal direction.[26]
-
The Ansidei Altarpiece, ca. 1505, beginning to move
on from Perugino
-
-
Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1507, borrows from the
pose of Leonardo's Leda[28]
-
Roman period
The Vatican
"Stanze"
By the end of 1508, he had moved to Rome, where he lived for the rest
of his life. He was invited by the new
Pope Julius II, perhaps at the suggestion of his architect
Donato Bramante, then engaged on St. Peter's, who came from just
outside Urbino and was distantly related to Raphael.[29]
Unlike Michelangelo, who had been kept hanging around in Rome for
several months after his first summons,[30]
Raphael was immediately commissioned by Julius to fresco what was
intended to become the Pope's private library at the
Vatican Palace.[31]
This was a much larger and more important commission than any he had
received before; he had only painted one altarpiece in Florence itself.
Several other artists and their teams of assistants were already at work
on different rooms, many painting over recently completed paintings
commissioned by Julius's loathed predecessor,
Alexander VI, whose contributions, and
arms, Julius was determined to efface from the palace.[32]
Michelangelo, meanwhile, had been commissioned to paint the
Sistine Chapel ceiling.
This first of the famous "Stanze" or "Raphael
Rooms" to be painted, now always known as the
Stanza della Segnatura after its use in Vasari's time, was to
make a stunning impact on Roman art, and remains generally regarded as
his greatest masterpiece, containing
The School of Athens,
The Parnassus and the
Disputa. Raphael was then given further rooms to paint,
displacing other artists including Perugino and Signorelli. He completed
a sequence of three rooms, each with paintings on each wall and often
the ceilings too, increasingly leaving the work of painting from his
detailed drawings to the large and skilled workshop team he had
acquired, who added a fourth room, probably only including some elements
designed by Raphael, after his early death in 1520. The death of Julius
in 1513 did not interrupt the work at all, as he was succeeded by
Raphael's last Pope, the
Medici
Pope Leo X, with whom Raphael formed an even closer relationship,
and who continued to commission him.[33]
Raphael's friend Cardinal Bibbiena was also one of Leo's old tutors, and
a close friend and advisor.
Raphael was clearly influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel
ceiling in the course of painting the room. Vasari said Bramante let him
in secretly, and the scaffolding was taken down in 1511 from the first
completed section. The reaction of other artists to the daunting force
of Michelangelo was the dominating question in Italian art for the
following few decades, and Raphael, who had already shown his gift for
absorbing influences into his own personal style, rose to the challenge
perhaps better than any other artist. One of the first and clearest
instances was the portrait in The School of Athens of
Michelangelo himself, as
Heraclitus, which seems to draw clearly from the Sybils and
ignudi of the Sistine ceiling. Other figures in that and later
paintings in the room show the same influences, but as still cohesive
with a development of Raphael's own style.[34]
Michelangelo accused Raphael of plagiarism and years after Raphael's
death, complained in a letter that "everything he knew about art he got
from me", although other quotations show more generous reactions.[35]
These very large and complex compositions have been regarded ever
since as among the supreme works of the
grand manner of the High Renaissance, and the "classic art" of the
post-antique West. They give a highly
idealised depiction of the forms represented, and the compositions,
though very carefully conceived in
drawings,
achieve "sprezzatura", a term invented by his friend Castiglione, who
defined it as "a certain nonchalance which conceals all artistry and
makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless ...".[36]
According to
Michael Levey, "Raphael gives his [figures] a superhuman clarity and
grace in a universe of Euclidian certainties".[37]
The painting is nearly all of the highest quality in the first two
rooms, but the later compositions in the Stanze, especially those
involving dramatic action, are not entirely as successful either in
conception or their execution by the workshop.
-
-
-
-
The Fire in the Borgo, 1514, Stanza dell'incendio
del Borgo, painted by the workshop to Raphael's design.
Other projects
The Vatican projects took most of his time, although he painted
several portraits, including those of his two main patrons, the popes
Julius II and his successor
Leo X, the former considered one of his finest. Other portraits were
of his own friends, like Castiglione, or the immediate Papal circle.
Other rulers pressed for work, and King
Francis I of France was sent two paintings as diplomatic gifts from
the Pope.[38]
For
Agostino Chigi, the hugely rich banker and Papal Treasurer, he
painted the
Galatea and designed further decorative frescoes for his
Villa Farnesina, and painted two chapels in the churches of
Santa Maria della Pace and
Santa Maria del Popolo. He also designed some of the decoration for
the Villa Madama, the work in both villas being executed by his
workshop.
One of his most important papal commissions was the
Raphael Cartoons (now
Victoria and Albert Museum), a series of 10
cartoons,
of which seven survive, for tapestries with scenes of the lives of
Saint Paul and
Saint Peter, for the
Sistine Chapel. The cartoons were sent to
Brussels to be woven in the workshop of
Pier van Aelst. It is possible that Raphael saw the finished series
before his death—they were probably completed in 1520.[39]
He also designed and painted the Loggia at the Vatican, a long
thin gallery then open to a courtyard on one side, decorated with
Roman-style
grottesche.[40]
He produced a number of significant altarpieces, including
The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia and the
Sistine Madonna. His last work, on which he was working up to
his death, was a large
Transfiguration, which together with
Il Spasimo shows the direction his art was taking in his final
years—more proto-Baroque
than
Mannerist.[41]
-
Galatea,1512, his only major mythology, for Chigi's
villa.
-
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 1515, one of the
seven remaining
Raphael Cartoons for tapestries.
-
Il Spasimo 1517, brings a new degree of
expressiveness to his art.
-
Workshop
Vasari says that Raphael eventually had a workshop of fifty pupils
and assistants, many of whom later became significant artists in their
own right. This was arguably the largest workshop team assembled under
any single
old master painter, and much higher than the norm. They included
established masters from other parts of Italy, probably working with
their own teams as sub-contractors, as well as pupils and journeymen. We
have very little evidence of the internal working arrangements of the
workshop, apart from the works of art themselves, often very difficult
to assign to a particular hand.[42]
The most important figures were
Giulio Romano, a young pupil from Rome (only about twenty-one at
Raphael's death), and
Gianfrancesco Penni, already a Florentine master. They were left
many of Raphael's drawings and other possessions, and to some extent
continued the workshop after Raphael's death. Penni did not achieve a
personal reputation equal to Giulio's, as after Raphael's death he
became Giulio's less-than-equal collaborator in turn for much of his
subsequent career.
Perino del Vaga, already a master, and
Polidoro da Caravaggio, who was supposedly promoted from a labourer
carrying building materials on the site, also became notable painters in
their own right. Polidoro's partner,
Maturino da Firenze, has, like Penni, been overshadowed in
subsequent reputation by his partner.
Giovanni da Udine had a more independent status, and was responsible
for the decorative
stucco
work and grotesques surrounding the main frescoes.[43]
Most of the artists were later scattered, and some killed, by the
violent
Sack of Rome in 1527.[44]
This did however contribute to the diffusion of versions of Raphael's
style around Italy and beyond.
Vasari emphasises that Raphael ran a very harmonious and efficient
workshop, and had extraordinary skill in smoothing over troubles and
arguments with both patrons and his assistants—a contrast with the
stormy pattern of Michelangelo's relationships with both.[45]
However though both Penni and Giulio were sufficiently skilled that
distinguishing between their hands and that of Raphael himself is still
sometimes difficult,[46]
there is no doubt that many of Raphael's later wall-paintings, and
probably some of his easel paintings, are more notable for their design
than their execution. Many of his portraits, if in good condition, show
his brilliance in the detailed handling of paint right up to the end of
his life.[47]
Other pupils or assistants include
Raffaellino del Colle,
Andrea Sabbatini,
Bartolommeo Ramenghi,
Pellegrino Aretusi,
Vincenzo Tamagni,
Battista Dossi,
Tommaso Vincidor,
Timoteo Viti (the Urbino painter), and the sculptor and architect
Lorenzetto (Giulio's brother-in-law).[48]
The printmakers and architects in Raphael's circle are discussed below.
It has been claimed the Flemish
Bernard van Orley worked for Raphael for a time, and Luca Penni,
brother of Gianfrancesco, may have been a member of the team.[49]
Portraits
Architecture
After Bramante's death in 1514, Raphael was named architect of the
new
St Peter's. Most of his work there was altered or demolished after
his death and the acceptance of Michelangelo's design, but a few
drawings have survived. It appears his designs would have made the
church a good deal gloomier than the final design, with massive piers
all the way down the nave, "like an alley" according to a critical
posthumous analysis by
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. It would perhaps have resembled the
temple in the background of
The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple.[50]
He designed several other buildings, and for a short time was the
most important architect in Rome, working for a small circle around the
Papacy. Julius had made changes to the street plan of Rome, creating
several new thoroughfares, and he wanted them filled with splendid
palaces.[51]
An important building, the
Palazzo Aquila for Leo's Papal
Chamberlain
Giovanni Battista Branconio, was completely destroyed to make way
for
Bernini's piazza for St. Peter's, but drawings of the façade
and courtyard remain. The façade was an unusually richly decorated one
for the period, including both painted panels on the top story (of
three), and much sculpture on the middle one.[52]
The main designs for the Villa Farnesina were not by Raphael, but he
did design, and paint, the
Chigi Chapel for the same patron,
Agostino Chigi, the Papal Treasurer. Another building, for Pope
Leo's doctor, the Palazzo di Jacobo da Brescia, was moved in the
1930s but survives; this was designed to complement a palace on the same
street by Bramante, where Raphael himself lived for a time.[53]
The
Villa Madama, a lavish hillside retreat for Cardinal Giulio de'
Medici, later
Pope Clement VII, was never finished, and his full plans have to be
reconstructed speculatively. He produced a design from which the final
construction plans were completed by
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. Even incomplete, it was the most
sophisticated villa design yet seen in Italy, and greatly influenced the
later development of the genre; it appears to be the only modern
building in Rome of which
Palladio made a measured drawing.[54]
Only some floor-plans remain for a large palace planned for himself
on the new
via
Giulia in the
rione of Regola, for which he was accumulating the land in his last
years. It was on an irregular island block near the river Tiber. It
seems all façades were to have a
giant order of
pilasters rising at least two storeys to the full height of the
piano nobile, "a gandiloquent feature unprecedented in private
palace design".[55]
In 1515 he was given powers as "Prefect" over all antiquities
unearthed entrusted within the city, or a mile outside. Raphael wrote a
letter to Pope Leo suggesting ways of halting the destruction of ancient
monuments, and proposed a visual survey of the city to record all
antiquities in an organised fashion. The Pope's concerns were not
exactly the same; he intended to continue to re-use ancient masonry in
the building of St Peter's, but wanted to ensure that all ancient
inscriptions were recorded, and sculpture preserved, before allowing the
stones to be reused.[56]
Drawings
Lucretia, engraved by Raimondi after a drawing by
Raphael. [57]
Raphael was one of the finest draftsmen in the history of Western
art, and used drawings extensively to plan his compositions. According
to a near-contemporary, when beginning to plan a composition, he would
lay out a large number of stock drawings of his on the floor, and begin
to draw "rapidly", borrowing figures from here and there.[58]
Over forty sketches survive for the Disputa in the Stanze, and
there may well have been many more originally; over four hundred sheets
survive altogether.[59]
He used different drawings to refine his poses and compositions,
apparently to a greater extent than most other painters, to judge by the
number of variants that survive: "... This is how Raphael himself, who
was so rich in inventiveness, used to work, always coming up with four
or six ways to show a narrative, each one different from the rest, and
all of them full of grace and well done." wrote another writer after his
death.[60]
For
John Shearman, Raphael's art marks "a shift of resources away from
production to research and development".[61]
When a final composition was achieved, scaled-up full-size cartoons
were often made, which were then pricked with a pin and "pounced" with a
bag of soot to leave dotted lines on the surface as a guide. He also
made unusually extensive use, on both paper and plaster, of a "blind
stylus", scratching lines which leave only an indentation, but no mark.
These can be seen on the wall in The School of Athens, and in the
originals of many drawings.[62]
The "Raphael Cartoons", as tapestry designs, were fully coloured in a
glue
distemper medium, as they were sent to Brussels to be followed by
the weavers.
In later works painted by the workshop, the drawings are often
painfully more attractive than the paintings.[63]
Most Raphael drawings are rather precise—even initial sketches with
naked outline figures are carefully drawn, and later working drawings
often have a high degree of finish, with shading and sometimes
highlights in white. They lack the freedom and energy of some of
Leonardo's and Michelangelo's sketches, but are nearly always
aesthetically very satisfying. He was one of the last artists to use
metalpoint (literally a sharp pointed piece of silver or another
metal) extensively, although he also made superb use of the freer medium
of red or black chalk.[64]
In his final years he was one of the first artists to use female models
for preparatory drawings—male pupils ("garzoni") were normally used for
studies of both sexes.[65]
-
-
-
-
Developing the composition for a Madonna and Child
Printmaking
Raphael made no
prints himself, but entered into a collaboration with
Marcantonio Raimondi to produce
engravings to Raphael's designs, which created many of the most
famous Italian prints of the century, and was important in the
rise of the reproductive print. His interest was unusual in such a
major artist; from his contemporaries it was only shared by
Titian,
who had worked much less successfully with Raimondi.[66]
A total of about fifty prints were made; some were copies of Raphael's
paintings, but other designs were apparently created by Raphael purely
to be turned into prints. Raphael made preparatory drawings, many of
which survive, for Raimondi to translate into engraving.[67]
The most famous original prints to result from the collaboration were
Lucretia, the Judgement of Paris and The Massacre of
the Innocents (of which two virtually identical versions were
engraved). Among prints of the paintings
The Parnassus (with considerable differences)[68]
and Galatea were also especially well-known. Outside Italy,
reproductive prints by Raimondi and others were the main way that
Raphael's art was experienced until the twentieth century.
Baviero Carocci, called "Il Baviera" by Vasari, an assistant who
Raphael evidently trusted with his money,[69]
ended up in control of most of the copper plates after Raphael's death,
and had a successful career in the new occupation of a publisher of
prints.[70]
-
-
The Massacre of the Innocents, engraving by (?)
Raimondi from a design by Raphael. The version "without fir
tree".
-
-
Private life
and death
Raphael lived in the
Palazzo Caprini in the
Borgo, in rather grand style in a palace designed by Bramante. He
never married, but in 1514 became engaged to Maria Bibbiena, Cardinal
Medici Bibbiena's niece; he seems to have been talked into this by his
friend the Cardinal, and his lack of enthusiasm seems to be shown by the
marriage not taking place before she died in 1520.[71]
He is said to have had many affairs, but a permanent fixture in his life
in Rome was "La Fornarina",
Margherita Luti, the daughter of a baker (fornaro) named
Francesco Luti from Siena who lived at Via del Governo Vecchio.[72]
He was made a "Groom
of the Chamber" of the Pope, which gave him status at court and an
additional income, and also a knight of the Papal
Order of the Golden Spur. Vasari claims he had toyed with the
ambition of becoming a
Cardinal, perhaps after some encouragement from Leo, which also may
account for his delaying his marriage.[71]
According to Vasari, Raphael's premature death on
Good Friday (April 6, 1520), which was possibly his 37th birthday,
was caused by a night of excessive sex with Luti, after which he fell
into a fever and, not telling his doctors that this was its cause, was
given the wrong cure, which killed him.[73]
Vasari also says that Raphael had also been born on a Good Friday, which
in 1483 fell on March 28.[74]
Whatever the cause, in his acute illness, which lasted fifteen days,
Raphael was composed enough to receive the
last rites, and to put his affairs in order. He dictated his will,
in which he left sufficient funds for his mistress's care, entrusted to
his loyal servant Baviera, and left most of his studio contents to
Giulio Romano and Penni. At his request, Raphael was buried in the
Pantheon.[75]
His funeral was extremely grand, attended by large crowds. The
inscription in his marble sarcophagus, an
elegiac
distich written by
Pietro Bembo, reads: "Ille hic est Raffael, timuit quo sospite
vinci, rerum magna parens et moriente mori," meaning: "Here lies that
famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and
when he was dying, feared herself to die."
Critical reception
Raphael was highly admired by his contemporaries, although his
influence on artistic style in his own century was less than that of
Michelangelo.
Mannerism, beginning at the time of his death, and later the
Baroque,
took art "in a direction totally opposed" to Raphael's qualities;[76]
"with Raphael's death, classic art - the High Renaissance - subsided",
as
Walter Friedländer put it.[77]
He was soon seen as the ideal model by those disliking the excesses of
Mannerism:
the opinion ...was generally held in the middle of the sixteenth
century that Raphael was the ideal balanced painter, universal in
his talent, satisfying all the absolute standards, and obeying all
the rules which were supposed to govern the arts, whereas
Michelangelo was the eccentric genius, more brilliant than any other
artists in his particular field, the drawing of the male nude, but
unbalanced and lacking in certain qualities, such as grace and
restraint, essential to the great artist. Those, like
Dolce and
Aretino, who held this view were usually the survivors of
Renaissance Humanism, unable to follow Michelangelo as he moved
on into Mannerism.[78]
Vasari himself, despite his hero remaining Michelangelo, came to see
his influence as harmful in some ways, and added passages to the second
edition of the
Lives expressing similar views.[79]
Raphael's compositions were always admired and studied, and became
the cornerstone of the
training of the Academies of art. His period of greatest influence
was from the late 17th to late 19th centuries, when his perfect decorum
and balance were greatly admired. He was seen as the best model for the
history painting, regarded as the highest in the
hierarchy of genres. Sir
Joshua Reynolds in his Discourses praised his "simple, grave,
and majestic dignity" and said he "stands in general foremost of the
first [ie best] painters", especially for his frescoes (in which he
included the "Raphael Cartoons"), whereas "Michael Angelo claims the
next attention. He did not possess so many excellences as Raffaelle, but
those he had were of the highest kind..." Echoing the sixteenth-century
views above, Reynolds goes on to say of Raphael:
The excellency of this extraordinary man lay in the propriety,
beauty, and majesty of his characters, his judicious contrivance of
his composition, correctness of drawing, purity of taste, and the
skilful accommodation of other men’s conceptions to his own purpose.
Nobody excelled him in that judgment, with which he united to his
own observations on nature the energy of Michael Angelo, and the
beauty and simplicity of the antique. To the question, therefore,
which ought to hold the first rank, Raffaelle or Michael Angelo, it
must be answered, that if it is to be given to him who possessed a
greater combination of the higher qualities of the art than any
other man, there is no doubt but Raffaelle is the first. But if,
according to
Longinus, the sublime, being the highest excellence that human
composition can attain to, abundantly compensates the absence of
every other beauty, and atones for all other deficiencies, then
Michael Angelo demands the preference.[80]
Reynolds was less enthusiastic about Raphael's panel paintings, but
the slight sentimentality of these made them enormously popular in the
19th century:"We have been familiar with them from childhood onwards,
through a far greater mass of reproductions than any other artist in the
world has ever had..." wrote
Wölfflin, who was born in 1862, of Raphael's Madonnas.[81]
In 19th century England the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood explicitly reacted against his influence
(and that of his admirers such as "Sir Sploshua"), seeking to return to
styles before what they saw as his baneful influence. According to a
critic whose ideas greatly influenced them,
John Ruskin:
The doom of the arts of Europe went forth from that chamber [the
Stanza della Segnatura], and it was brought about in great part by
the very excellencies of the man who had thus marked the
commencement of decline. The perfection of execution and the beauty
of feature which were attained in his works, and in those of his
great contemporaries, rendered finish of execution and beauty of
form the chief objects of all artists; and thenceforward execution
was looked for rather than thought, and beauty rather than veracity.
And as I told you, these are the two secondary causes of the
decline of art; the first being the loss of moral purpose. Pray note
them clearly. In mediæval art, thought is the first thing, execution
the second; in modern art execution is the first thing, and thought
the second. And again, in mediæval art, truth is first, beauty
second; in modern art, beauty is first, truth second. The mediæval
principles led up to Raphael, and the modern principles lead down
from him.[82]
He was still seen by 20th century critics like
Bernard Berenson as the "most famous and most loved" master of the
High Renaissance,[83]
but it would seem he has since been overtaken by Michelangelo and
Leonardo in this respect.[84]
See also
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