Raphael

Italian painter

• Born: April 6, 1483
• Birthplace: Urbino, duchy of Urbino (now in Italy)
• Died: April 6, 1520
• Place of death: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)

With Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, Raphael was part of the great trio of High Renaissance masters. He became the most prolific and most widely celebrated painter of his time.

Early Life

Raffaello Sanzio, known as Raphael (RAF-ee-ehl), had the good fortune to be born in the mountain town of Urbino, where Federico da Montefeltro maintained a ducal court manifesting splendor, pomp, elegance, and the new learning. Raphael’s father, Giovanni, a minor painter and versifier, had access to the court; from his youth, Raphael was introduced to the ongoing works of Piero della Francesca, Sandro Botticelli, Paolo Uccello, and other contemporary masters. Giovanni died, however, when Raphael was eleven; at this age, he may already have been apprenticed to Pietro Perugino in Perugia. There he rapidly moved to the head of that artist’s busy workshop, which won so many commissions that the master had to develop an elaborate atelier system, in which assistants did much of the preliminary work on projects. By the age of sixteen, Raphael was already influencing local artists, and from this time his hand is detectable in Perugino’s works.

Raphael’s earliest independent paintings both date from 1504. The first, Marriage of the Virgin , shows both his indebtedness to Perugino the disposal of figures, the use of a temple as background, and an array of colors are all drawn from him and the introduction of what are to become signature characteristics the supple, resilient posture of the figures, their unearthly serenity of expression, and the rhythmic organization of the composition. The second, Saint George and the Dragon , is a small panel that was commissioned by the duke of Urbino to present to Henry VII of England. The influence of Leonardo da Vinci’s Battle of Anghiari (1503) is evident here, as it is in all subsequent mounted battle paintings. Again the dominant element is rhythmic organization: The mounted knight on his diagonally placed steed intersects the massed landscape, so that all the tension of the painting drives through the lance, pinning the wriggling monster to the earth. The spiral coil of the horse’s body generates much of the accumulated tension; yet the animal itself is surprisingly static, betraying the artist’s inexperience. The painting abounds in finely observed, meticulously rendered details; the young artist seems to be showing off the facility of his technique. These two paintings constitute the auspicious beginning of an ambitious career.

Life’s Work

Raphael’s fifteen-year career falls into two phases, Florence and Rome. He settled in Florence in 1505, stepping into a void created by the withdrawal of both Leonardo and Michelangelo, at a time when the appetite for painting had been stimulated by their examples. Raphael’s facility soon proved prosperous. Within three years, he finished seventeen still-extant Madonnas and Holy Families, besides several other major works. That kind of activity makes both Michelangelo, productive as he was, and Leonardo, who failed to complete one painting during that period, look like monuments of indolence. Part of the reason for this difference derives from Raphael’s method of working. Unlike either of his fellow giants, Raphael did not approach painting as a series of solutions to technical problems of representation. Instead, he made preliminary sketches many of them preserved which show him testing variables in the relationship of forms. Only in the painting itself would he settle on one moment in the flow of forms. That allowed him to produce paintings that merely glossed over problems that would have hamstrung either of the other two. That is, Raphael painted for his patrons, not for his peers.

The Madonna of the Meadows (1505) is one of the best of the markedly similar items in the series. As before, much of the design and the framing landscape derives from Leonardo’s examples and much of the iconography from Michelangelo’s. Yet the rhythmical organization, the sinuous upward coiling, is distinctly Raphael, as is the countermovement in the downward glance of the Virgin. Yet the truly astonishing feature is the Virgin’s face. Though both Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi had anticipated this clarity of line and simplicity of form, the viewer is still struck almost dumb by this representation of incarnate grace and superhuman serenity.

Raphael also produced for his patrons a remarkable series of portraits, in the process raising the portrait to a new level. At the same time that he was idealizing the features of his sacred work, he reversed the practice with his portraits. With them, he became the dispassionate observer, coolly recording the essential character of his subjects. The result is a gallery of distinct personalities, caught in moments of self-revelation. In doing this, he became the most successful portraitist of all time.

Around 1509, the twenty-six-year-old Raphael was called to Rome by Pope Julius II to embark on the major phase of his career, which would last for eleven years. His first commission from the pope was to take over the official decorations of the Vatican apartments (called Stanze, or rooms) from Sodoma. He started with the Stanza della Segnatura; in it, he determined to depict the ideals of the new pope’s regime and, in the act, create frescoes of unprecedented refinement and harmony of form. His plan included two major wall frescoes facing each other and a complementary lunette: the Dispute over the Sacrament (1510-1511), the misnamed School of Athens (1510-1511), and the Cardinal Virtues (1511). The first is an attempt to represent the entire doctrine of the Eucharist, from its origin in Heaven to its veneration by the people. In the cloud scene above, Raphael portrays the ordered harmony of divine Providence, in sharp contrast to the fierce contention of theologians from various disciplines on Earth below. The grandeur and rhythmic energy of the composition surpass anything yet attempted in art or would, if Michelangelo were not simultaneously at work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling a few barricaded corridors away. Even so, the scene is colossal.

The medallion inset above the Dispute over the Sacrament depicts Theology; opposite it is that for Philosophy. The fresco below, the School of Athens, attempts to do for that field what the Dispute over the Sacrament does for theology that is, represent all the leading figures in classical philosophy engaged in debate. This painting is Raphael’s best-known work; it provides the textbook example of the High Renaissance ideals of integral unity and spatial harmony. The figures circulate in depth around the central figures of Plato and Aristotle, all set within a great vaulted dome in the classical manner, impractical but magnificently proportioned. This beautifully rational frame establishes the perfect setting for the debate of abstract problems; the figures surge beneath the stable, solid dome. The philosophers themselves are wonderfully individualized, yet each is playing an ensemble role in the total composition. The only modern figure slumps prominently in the foreground, dressed in stonecutter’s work clothes: He turns out to be Michelangelo, the single man alive whom Raphael considered worthy of a place in the company of the ancients. The painting thus constitutes Raphael’s statement of the relationship of the Renaissance to antiquity. Furthermore, the lunette of the Cardinal Virtues demonstrates what Raphael had learned from Michelangelo; for his figures there suddenly take on the monumentality of that master, though transformed by Raphael’s characteristic sweetness, organic rhythm, and grace.

This transition in style, from balanced serenity to dramatic expressiveness, culminates in the second apartment, the Stanza d’Eliodoro, which contains two full-wall frescoes and two window surrounds: the Expulsion of Heliodorus (1512), the Expulsion of Attila (1513-1514), the Mass of Bolsena (1512), and the Liberation of Saint Peter from Prison (1512). These combine harmony of organization with new, vibrant coloring and dramatic tension, so that the images seem almost to seethe with motion and sing with color. They show Raphael raising his unique style of spiral rhythmic organization to a new height: His figures gain weight and tension, and energy explodes in their dynamic interconnection. The artist seems to be moving toward a mode of representation beyond the capacity of the High Renaissance. His work here has been termed proto-Baroque for this reason. The Expulsion of Heliodorus is typical of this new sense of the dramatic. In it Raphael shows that he was secure enough in his habits of rational organization to test them to their limits. His figures take on the mass and muscle of Michelangelo’s; they vibrate with energies that threaten to tear apart his rationally organized scheme. Everything still harmonizes, but only barely.

Raphael’s Sistine Madonna (1513) created a vision of the Madonna that totally eclipsed all his former efforts. If any painting crystallizes the essence of the High Renaissance, this one does. This work defines rhythmic organization: Its broad spiral curves and delicately balanced masses, counterpointed by the two often-excerpted putti at the bottom of the frame, almost look like a demonstration piece for a painting class. Furthermore, the Virgin is the quintessential Virgin, perhaps the loveliest woman ever painted. Among other portraits of this period that confirm his reputation as a portraitist are those of Baldassare Castiglione and Pope Leo X with Cardinals . They have never been excelled.

Raphael’s most ambitious pictorial project was to design ten massive tapestries, for which he produced full-size watercolor cartoons as models. These were intended to continue the iconographic cycle on Christian religious history begun by Michelangelo. This is Raphael’s largest work, and it exhibits his dramatic intensity raised to its highest power. At the same time, Raphael was busy with architectural projects, the grandest of which is the Villa Madama in Rome; though unfinished at his death and never completed, the fragment is exquisite in design and proportion and elegant in its imaginative detail.

His final great painting, completed by assistants, is the Transfiguration of Christ (1517). Here Raphael matches the level he had reached in the Expulsion of Heliodorus; color, design, and rhythm fuse in a drama that swirls off the canvas, and the figures pulse with real breath and warmth. Moreover, this painting generates a religious intensity far removed from the serene, rational indifference of the early Madonnas. Unfortunately, Raphael had little time to develop this mystical strain, for he died after a brief illness on April 6, 1520.

Significance

Raphael is the Renaissance artist ideal, or at least the embodiment of one half of the Renaissance standard of excellence. In Il libro del cortegiano (1528; The Book of the Courtier , 1561), Raphael’s friend Baldassare Castiglione had defined the essential quality of the refined gentleman as sprezzatura, an untranslatable term that means something like making difficult things look easy. Raphael certainly had the technical facility for that. Perhaps no other painter possessed equal talent. Raphael could do things effortlessly with brush or pen that artists of normal ability could produce only with monumental labor. Moreover, this effortlessness comes through in his work: Everything he does looks easy, natural, right; his figures seem not to be figures but simply themselves. In many ways, he taught his viewers what it meant to see. In the paintings, this ease of technique translates itself into ineffable grace.

Yet in his early works, Raphael pays a price for this facility. He produced so much so easily that it is possible to accuse him of creating by mechanical formula. Furthermore, instead of solving technical problems, he merely brushes by them; in this respect, he falls short of another Renaissance ideal, to make human intelligence the norm by which everything knowable was to be measured. As a result, a premium was placed on meeting the difficult head-on; problems were meant to be solved, and the individual of true genius used reason to find a solution. Raphael’s talent was so great that he ran the risk of becoming merely facile.

His encounters with Leonardo and Michelangelo changed that. Not that he became a great innovator, though much of his work did establish formal precedents, especially in portraits and in group narratives. Rembrandt, for example, copied Raphael’s canvases with care and imitated his poses, and Nicolas Poussin and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres are almost unimaginable without his examples.

His work for the Vatican, however, clearly ranks with the greatest paintings of all time. In them, the early grace and serenity take on weight, mass, and energy, and a dynamic intelligence informs the whole. In these respects, Raphael becomes the incarnation of the High Renaissance ideal.

As a portraitist he is supreme; his perfectly balanced, perfectly poised figures seem to occupy a moment in time, so that one can imagine a gallery of them carrying on civilized conversation when no one is in the room. His real genius, however, appears in the Vatican group compositions, in which he seems to create his own heroic universe, electric with its own energy and populated with entirely plausible though larger-than-life characters. There Raphael seems to reach the limits of the natural. It is small wonder that painters succeeding him were forced to grotesque distortions to represent superabundant energy; only Raphael could cage such forces within his cosmos of radiant and dynamic calm.

Bibliography

Beck, James. Raphael. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1976. This is an excellent, thorough study of Raphael and his times, with much technical information. Intended mainly for specialists, it is surprisingly approachable and packed with a wealth of detail and good reproductions.

De Vecchi, Pierluigi. Raphael. New York: Abbeville Press, 2002. Major study of the life and work of Raphael, including his paintings, drawings, etchings, interior design, and architecture. Reads the work largely as a function of the need to express the relationship between earthly love and divine love. Includes three hundred color illustrations, chronology, bibliography, and index.

Fischel, Oskar. Raphael. Translated by B. Rackham. 2 vols. London: Kegan Paul, 1948. Reprint. London: Spring Books, 1964. Fischel presents the authoritative, old-fashioned account of Raphael’s life and works. Though somewhat dated, Fischel is indispensable, partly because critical opinion on Raphael has not changed much since the publication of this work.

Freedberg, Sydney J. Painting in Italy, 1500-1600. 3d ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993. The reproductions in this small-format book do little justice to Raphael’s large-scale works, but then no reproductions can. The text, intended for the general reader, is appealingly informative and nontechnical, making this a useful general reference.

Hall, Marcia, ed. Raphael’s “School of Athens.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Anthology of criticism of Raphael’s most famous fresco. Collects two classic essays by Giovanni Pietro Bellori and Heinrich Wolfflin, together with four previously unpublished articles. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Hartt, Frederick. History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. 5th ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003. Hartt provides the most accessible brief introduction to the work of Raphael, in clear, nontechnical language and with good reproductions, though mostly in black and white. He is particularly good at summarizing iconography and analyzing formal qualities.

Jones, Roger, and Nicholas Penny. Raphael. New London, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983. This nonspecialist text is a fine source for the general reader, placing Raphael squarely in his historical and social setting and including brilliant reproductions of entire works as well as enlargements of details.

Meyer zur Capellen, Jürg. Raphael in Florence. Translated by Stefan B. Polter. Edited by Jane Havell. London: Azimuth Books, 1996. A study of Raphael’s formative years in Florence from 1500 to 1508 and the influence of Florentine culture on his career. Includes illustrations and bibliographic references.

Pon, Lisa. Raphael, Dürer, and MarcAntonio Raimondi: Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. An important study of the meaning of art and the figure of the artist in Renaissance Italy. Argues that the notion of the individual genius expressing his distinctive self through his images comes into being at almost the same time that new engraving technologies were invented that involved collaborative artistry and the dissemination of multiple copies of previously unique images. Looks at the cultural tension between these two novel models of art in the work of Raphael and Albrecht Dürer with engraver Marcantonio. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Raphael. The Complete Works of Raphael. Edited by Mario Salmi et al. New York: Reynal, 1969. As the title indicates, this is the only work available that attempts to catalog and reproduce everything that Raphael accomplished. This volume offers more than any other, and the documentation is thorough.

Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Translated by Gaston du C. de Vere. Reprint. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979. Though not always accurate, Vasari is the best near-contemporary source for Raphael’s life and his contemporary reception and reputation. Vasari’s work is full of entertaining anecdotes and much miscellaneous information, all gathered at second hand. He is better on Raphael than on some, perhaps because he identified so closely with him.