Wednesday 3 November 2021

Raphael - part 4

 For centuries Raphael has been recognised as the supreme High Renaissance painter, more versatile than Michaelangelo and more prolific than their older contemporary Leonardo. Though he died at 37, Raphael's example as a paragon of classicism dominated the academic tradition of European painting until the mid-19th century.

Raphael (Raffaello Santi) was born in Urbino where his father, Giovanni Santi, was court painter. He almost certainly began his training there and must have known works by Mantegna, Uccello, and Piero della Francesca from an early age. His earliest paintings were also greatly influenced by Purgino. From 1500 - when he became an independent master - to 1508 he worked throughout central Italy, particularly Florence, where he became a noted portraitist and painter of Madonnas.

In 1508, at the age of 25, he was called to the court of Pope Julius II to help with the redecoration of the papal apartments. In Rome he evolved as a portraitist, and became one of the greatest of all history painters.

He remained in Rome for the rest of his life and in 1514, on the death of Bramante, he was appointed architect in charge of St Peter’s.

For earlier works see parts 1 - 3 also.

This is part 4 of 5 parts on the works of Raphael:


c1508 Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist
(The Esterházy Madonna)
oil on canvas 28.5 x 21.5 cm
Museum of Fine Arts Budapest

c1508 Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist
( study  for the above )
pen and brown ink over black chalk 28.7 x 19.2 cm
Uffizi Gallery, Florence


1509  La Madone de Lorette
oil on wood panel 120 x 90 cm
Musée Condé,  Château de Chantilly, Oise, France

1509 Reading Madonna and Child in a Landscape betweem two Cherub Heads
pen and brown ink over traces of stylus
Albertina, Venice

c1509-10 The Madonna and Child with the Infant Baptist

 Notes by The National Gallery

In this little picture Raphael depicts the moment when the Christ Child takes a carnation, traditionally symbolic of divine love and the Passion (Christ’s torture and crucifixion), from his cousin John the Baptist’s hand. The space between the children’s hands is the centre of the careful geometry of the composition, emphasising this important moment of Christ’s acceptance of his future sacrifice for humanity. The Virgin appears lost in melancholy thought. Perhaps she is thinking of the children’s destinies.

The picture is one of several small and medium-sized Madonnas that Raphael produced at the same time as he was painting a suite of rooms in the Vatican palace for the pope, the so-called stanze. It was probably made for a member of the papal court for private devotion, although we do not know who commissioned it. The painting is known as the Garvagh Madonna or Aldobrandini Madonna after its previous owner.

c1509-10 The Madonna and Child with the Infant Baptist
(The Garvagh Madonna aka The Aldobrandini Madonna)
oil on wood panel 38.9 x 32.9 cm
The National Gallery, London

c1509-11 The Madonna and Child 

Notes from The National Gallery

The infant Christ throws his arms affectionately around his mother’s neck and smiles at us. But the Virgin Mary’s eyes are downcast, as though her thoughts are already on his future sacrifice.

The painting probably dates from the early years of Raphael’s time in Rome. It is called the ‘Mackintosh Madonna’ after the person who donated it to the National Gallery. It is also known as the ‘Madonna of the Tower’ because of the building just visible in the left background.

c1509-11 The Madonna and Child
(The Mackintosh Madonna)
oil on canvas, transferred from wood (largely repainted)
78.8 x 64.2 cm
The National Gallery, London

1509-1510 Madonna de Loreto
oil on wood panel 120 x 90 cm
Musée Condé,  Château de Chantilly in Chantilly, Oise

c1509-1510 Study for the figure of Diogenes in the "School of Athens"
silver point on paper 24.5 x 28.4 cm
Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany

1509-1511 Study for the Disputation of the Holy Sacrament
pen and brown ink 31.1 x 20.8 cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA

c1509-1511 Portrait of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese
oil on wood panel 139 x 91 cm
Museo de Capodimonte, Naples

c1509-1515 Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami
oil on wood panel 91 x 61 cm
Palantine Gallery, Pitti Palace, Florence

c1510-15-18 Madonna with the Blue Diadem
oil on wood panel 68 x 48 cm
Louvre, Paris

c1510-1511 Portrait of a Cardinal
oil on wood panel 79 x 61 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

c1510-1511 Study for the Figure of Melpomene
pen and brown ink over blind stylus 33 x 21.9 cm
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

c1510-1511 The Adoration of the Shepherds
pen and brown ink on white paper 40.5 x 26.6 cm
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

c1510-1511 The Angel appearing to Joachim
pen and brush in yellowish-brown wash over black chalk heightened with white bodycolour 31.4 x 27.6 cm
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

c1510 Allegorical Figure of Theology
pen and brown ink 20.1 x 14.3 cm
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

c1510 The Prophets Hosea and Jonah
pen and brown ink with brown wash over black chalk, heightened with white and squared for transfer 26.2 x 20 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1511 Portrait of Pope Julius II 

Notes by The National Gallery

This portrait of the careworn Pope Julius II (1443–1513) is usually dated to the one-and-a-half-year period during which he wore a beard. He grew it in 1510 as a token of mortification while recovering from a serious illness brought on by the loss of Bologna to the French, and vowed not to shave it off until French troops had been expelled from Italy, which happened in 1512. Julius was a great patron of the arts, commissioning Raphael to decorate the papal apartments in the Vatican and ordering the rebuilding of St Peter’s in Rome.

The two golden acorns on the Pope’s chair allude to his family name, della Rovere (rovere is Italian for oak). The portrait was displayed on 12 December 1513, after Julius’s death, in the Roman church of Santa Maria del Popolo. It was enormously influential and became the model for ecclesiastical portraiture over the following 200 years.

1511 Portrait of Pope Julius II
oil on poplar panel 108.7 x 81 cm
The National Gallery, London

c1511-1512 Madonna of Foligno
oil on wood transferred to canvas 320 x 194 cm
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City

c1511 Alba Madonna
oil on wood transferred to canvas 94.5 cm diameter
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

c1511 Alba Madonna preparatory sketch
pen and ink 42.2 x 27.2 cm
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, Belgium

c1511 Madonna of Loreto
oil on panel 120 x 90 cm
Musée Condé, Chantilly

1512-1513 The Sistine Madonna
269.5 x 201 cm
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

c1512-1513 The Massacre of the Innocents
engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi (engraver) / Rafael
28.1 x 43 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

c1512-1515 Portrait of Bindo Altoviti
oil on wood panel 60 x 44 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

c1512 A Mother embracing a Child
metal-point with white heightening on grey prepared paper 16.1 x 12.8
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

c1512 The Coronation of the Virgin
pen and brown ink over blind stylus 35.3 x 28.9 cm
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

c1512 Triumph of Galatea

Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, tells the story of the mortal peasant shepherd, Acis, who falls in love with Galatea, a Nereid or water nymph, whose Greek name translates as ‘she who is milk white’. The jealous Cyclops, Polyphemus, bludgeoned Acis with a boulder and, in response, a distraught Galatea transformed him into the Sicilian river that bears his name. Raphael’s Triumph of Galatea, a fresco created around 1512 for the Villa Farnesina in Rome, depicts a scene later in the Nereid’s life, when Galatea stands triumphant in a shell chariot pulled along by dolphins. To the left, a Triton, half-man and half-fish, abducts a sea nymph, while another sounds a shell trumpet.


1512c Triumph of Galatea
fresco  
Villa Farnesina, Rome

1513-1514 Studies of the Christ Child
red chalk 22 x 14.7 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

c1513-1514 Holy Family with the boys of St. John
Raphael and workshop
oil on poplar wood 154.5 x 114 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna ©KHM-Museumsverband

c1513-1514 Madonna dell'Impannata
Raphael and workshop
 oil on wood panel 158 x 125 cm
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

c1513-1514 Madonna della Tenda
oil on wood panel 65.8 x 51.2 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

c1513-1514 The Sistine Madonna
oil on canvas 265 x 196 cm
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany

c1513-1514 Madonna with the Fish
oil  on panel transferred to canvas 215 x 158 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

1513-1614 Madonna della seggiola
oil on wood panel 71 cm diameter
Palantine Gallery, Pitti Palace, Florence


No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.