Raphael Part 1

Raphael.

by Estelle M. Hurll.

PREFACE

The object of this collection of prints is to introduce the student to Raphael through the pictures which appeal directly to the imagination with some story interest. With this characteristic as the leading principle of choice, the variety of subjects is perhaps as wide as the conditions admit. No attempt is made to represent all the sides of the painter's art; his portraits are ignored and his Madonnas inadequately represented, in order to give place to pictures which awaken as many points of interest as possible. Within these narrow limits Raphael, as an ill.u.s.trator and a composer, is even in these few pictures clearly represented.

Had choice been limited to pictures painted throughout by Raphael himself, the value of the collection would have been seriously affected, as some of the master's most interesting works were handed over to his pupils for execution. Our list, however, contains only such works as are at this date reckoned indisputably to be from Raphael's own designs.

The text has only the modest aim of making the pictures intelligible.

Critical explanations are beyond its scope, and historical data are for the most part relegated to the accompanying tables. The Introduction is intended for teachers, and contains suggestions for a comparative study of the pictures which may be carried out at discretion.

All the reproductions in this book are from photographs made directly from the original paintings. In order to get the best results a careful comparison was made of the work of leading photographers. The photographer of each picture is mentioned in the Table of Contents.

ESTELLE M. HURLL.

NEW BEDFORD, Ma.s.s.

June, 1899.

INTRODUCTION

I. ON RAPHAEL'S CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST.

No one of the old Italian masters has taken such a firm hold upon the popular imagination as Raphael. Other artists wax and wane in public favor as they are praised by one generation of critics or disparaged by the next; but Raphael's name continues to stand in public estimation as that of the favorite painter in Christendom. The pa.s.sing centuries do not dim his fame, though he is subjected to severe criticism; and he continues, as he began, the first love of the people.

The subjects of his pictures are nearly all of a cheerful nature. He exercised his skill for the most part on scenes which were agreeable to contemplate. Pain and ugliness were strangers to his art; he was preeminently the artist of joy. This is to be referred not only to his pleasure-loving nature, but to the great influence upon him of the rediscovery of Greek art in his day, an art which dealt distinctively with objects of delight.

Moreover Raphael is compa.s.sionate towards mind as well as heart; he requires of us neither too strenuous feeling nor too much thinking. As his subjects do not overtax the sympathies with harrowing emotions, neither does his art overtax the understanding with complicated effects. His pictures are apparently so simple that they demand no great intellectual effort and no technical education to enjoy them.

He does all the work for us, and his art is too perfect to astonish.

It was not his way to show what difficult things he could do, but he made it appear that great art is the easiest thing in the world. This ease was, however, the result of a splendid mastery of his art. Thus he arranges the fifty-two figures in the School of Athens, or the three figures of the Madonna of the Chair, so simply and un.o.btrusively that we might imagine such feats were an every-day affair. Yet in both cases he solves most difficult problems of composition with a success scarcely paralleled in the history of art.

Even the Master himself seldom achieved the same kind of success twice. His Parna.s.sus lacks the variety of the School of Athens, though the single figures have a similar grace, and the Incendio del Borgo or Conflagration in the Borgo, with groups equal in beauty to any in the other two frescoes, has not the unity of either. Again, while the Parna.s.sus and the Liberation of Peter show a masterly adaptation to extremely awkward s.p.a.ces, the Transfiguration fails to solve a much easier problem of composition.

Preferring by an instinct such as the Greek artist possessed, the statuesque effects of repose to the portrayal of action, Raphael showed himself capable of both. The h.e.l.lenic calm of Parna.s.sus is not more impressive than the splendid charge of the avenging spirits upon Heliodorus; the visionary idealism of the angel-led Peter is matched by the vigorous realism of Peter called from his fis.h.i.+ng to the apostles.h.i.+p; the brooding quiet of maternity expressed in the Madonna of the Chair has a perfect complement in the alert activity of the swiftly moving Sistine Madonna.

Great as was Raphael's achievement in many directions, he is remembered above all else as a painter of Madonnas. Here was the subject best expressing the individuality of his genius. From the beginning to the end of his career the sweet mystery of motherhood never ceased to fascinate him. Again and again he sounded the depths of maternal experience, always making some new discovery.

The Madonna of the Chair emphasizes most prominently, perhaps, the physical instincts of maternity. "She bends over the child," says Taine, "with the beautiful action of a wild animal." Like a mother creature instinctively protecting her young, she gathers him in her capacious embrace as if to s.h.i.+eld him from some impending danger. The Sistine Madonna, on the other hand, is the most spiritual of Raphael's creations, the perfect embodiment of ideal womanhood. The mother's love is here transfigured by the spirit of sacrifice. Forgetful of self, and obedient to the heavenly summons, she bears her son forth to the service of humanity.

Sister spirits of the Madonnas, and hardly second in delicate loveliness, are the virgin saints of Raphael; the Catherine, the Cecilia, the Magdalene, and the Barbara are abiding ideals in our dreams of fair women.

The same sweetness of nature which prompted Raphael's fondness for lovely women and happy children shows itself also in his delineation of angels. The archangel Michael, the angel visitors of Abraham, and the celestial spirits appearing to Heliodorus all follow closely upon the Madonnas in the purity and serenity of their beauty. In the same fellows.h.i.+p also belongs the beautiful youth in the crowd at Lystra, who is as sharply contrasted with his surroundings as if he were a denizen of another sphere. The ideal is again repeated in the St. John of the Cecilia altar-piece, whose uplifted face has a sweetness which is not so much feminine as celestial. The angel of Peter's deliverance is less successful than the artist's other angel types. The head seems too small for the splendidly vigorous body, and the face lacks somewhat of strength.

If Raphael's favorite ideals were drawn from youth and womanhood, it was not because he did not understand the purely masculine. The aeneas of the Borgo fresco, the Paul of the Cecilia altar-piece, and the Sixtus of the Sistine Madonna show, in three ages, what is best and most distinctive in ideal manhood.

Raphael's type of beauty is not such as calls forth immediate or extravagant admiration: it is satisfying rather than amazing, and its qualities dawn slowly though steadily upon the imagination. Raphael holds always to the golden mean; no exaggerated note jars upon the perfection of his harmonies. For this reason his pictures never grow tiresome. They stand the test of daily companions.h.i.+p and grow ever lovelier through familiarity.

Without forcing the parallel, we may say that something of the same spirit which animated the work of Raphael reappears in the familiar poetry of Longfellow. The one artist had an eye for beautiful line, the other had an ear for melodious verse, and both alike shunned whatever was inharmonious, always seeking grace and symmetry. Their subjects were, indeed, of dissimilar range. Raphael, impressed by the scholars.h.i.+p of his time, chose themes which were larger and more related to the experience of the world, while Longfellow was never very far removed from the golden milestone of domestic life. Yet in diverse subjects both turned instinctively to aspects of womanhood, to what was refined and gently emotional, and turned away from the violent and revolutionary.

II. ON BOOKS OF REFERENCE.

Within the last forty years the methods of criticism as applied to art have undergone so many changes that there has been a rapid succession of biographers and critics of Raphael until the student reader of to-day scarcely knows whom to believe. The time was when Vasari, in his important "Lives of the Painters," was the accepted source of information, and all current writers borrowed unquestioningly from him both facts and opinions; but the old chronicler was too often influenced by popular gossip and personal prejudice to be depended upon. Many of his stories are positively disproved by doc.u.mentary evidence, and for some years he has stood in dust and disgrace on the upper shelves of the bookcase. From this exile a revised edition has recently brought him forth to fresh honors. The joint work of Mr. and Mrs. E. H. Blashfield with A. A. Hopkins has given us an annotated text which we may read with equal pleasure and profit. This is certainly the best of all reference books to put us in touch with the period in which Raphael lived.

The German work on Raphael by Pa.s.savant, once so weighty, is now useful only to those who have opportunity to compare it with other authorities. So likewise the work of Crowe and Cavalcaselle is no longer desirable as a sole authority. Even the splendid work of Eugene Muntz (translated by Walter Armstrong), the latest and most valuable of the comprehensive books on Raphael, must be read in the light of later criticism. Muntz's volume contains a complete list of the master's works,--frescoes, easel pictures, tapestries, drawings, and works in architecture and sculpture,--each cla.s.s subdivided according to subject.

A few of the shorter biographies of Raphael have been corrected according to the conclusions of the most recent critical scholars.h.i.+p, as represented by Morelli. Notable among these is the life of Raphael in Kugler's "Handbook of the Italian Schools," revised by A. H.

Layard, and the life of Raphael included in Mrs. Jameson's "Early Italian Painters," revised by Estelle M. Hurll.

The latest entirely new short biographies of Raphael are those (1) by Mrs. Henry Ady (Julia Cartwright), issued in two parts as monographs for "The Portfolio:" the "Early Work of Raphael" and "Raphael in Rome," and (2) by H. Knackfuss in a series of German "Kunstler-Monographien" (also published in an English translation). Both are well ill.u.s.trated and useful books.

Finally the student is referred to Bernhard Berenson's "Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance" for an exceedingly valuable estimate of Raphael's character as an artist.

Many books have been written on the separate works of Raphael,--the Vatican frescoes, the cartoons, the Madonnas, etc.,--but as most of these are in German and Italian they are not generally available. The Blashfield Vasari enumerates a long list of them in the Bibliography preceding the "Life of Raphael."

III. HISTORICAL DIRECTORY OF THE PICTURES OF THIS COLLECTION.

_Portrait frontispiece._ Painted on wood, 1506, as a gift from the painter to his uncle, Simone Ciarla, of Urbino. In 1588 the portrait pa.s.sed from Urbino to the Academy of St. Luke, Rome. Later it was sold to Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici for the Hall of Portraits of the Old Masters in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

1. _The Madonna of the Chair_ is a wood panel 2 ft. 4-3/4 in.

diameter. It was painted between 1510-1514, and is now in the Pitti Gallery, Florence.

2. _Abraham and the Three Angels_ is a mural painting in the fourth arcade of the Loggie, Vatican Palace, Rome. It was executed by Francesco Penni.

3, 4. _The Miraculous Draught of Fishes_ and _The Sacrifice at Lystra_ are cartoons in distemper colors. The execution was by Raphael's pupils in 1515-1516. They were sent to Flanders as designs for tapestries, and discovered by Rubens in a manufactory at Arras, 1630; Charles I. of England purchased them, and they are now in the South Kensington Museum, London.

5. _Heliodorus driven from the Temple_ (detail of the larger composition known by this name) is a mural painting which gives the name to the Camera d' Eliodoro, Vatican Palace, Rome. The date of the painting is 1511-1512.

6. _The Liberation of Peter_ is a mural painting in the Camera d'

Eliodoro, Vatican Palace, Rome; the execution is by Giulio Romano, 1514.

7. _The Holy Family of Francis I._ is a canvas panel 8 ft. 9 in. by 5 ft. 3 in., painted for Lorenzo de' Medici, and presented by the Pope Leo X. to Francis I. of France; hence the name. It was executed by Giulio Romano in 1518, and is now in the Louvre, Paris.

8. _St. Catherine of Alexandria_ is a wood panel 2 ft. 4 in. by I ft.

9-1/2 in., painted in 1507, and now in the National Gallery, London.

9. _St. Cecilia_ is a panel painting which was transferred from wood to canvas. It was painted about 1516 for the Church of S. Giovanni a Monte, Bologna, and is now in the Bologna Gallery.

10. _The Transfiguration_, 14 ft. 9 in. by 9 ft. 1-1/2 in. Raphael painted the upper part in 1519, and the picture was finished after his death by Giulio Romano. It was ordered by the Cardinal de' Medici for the Cathedral at Narbonne (France), but was retained in Rome after the artist's death. It was taken to Paris during the French Revolution, and restored to Rome in 1815. It is now in the Vatican Gallery.