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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, so much 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 Esterhazy Madonna (c. 1505-07; Museum of Fine
Arts, Budapest), and La Belle Jardiniere (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; the murals 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 Michelangelo to 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) 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; Gemaldegalerie, 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; Uffizi, 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 by 1516, 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
at the 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 centuries to 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.
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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