DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0020
RAPHAEL
Yet it was observed how in Germany Raphael’s most famous work continued
again and again to exercise its compelling power; it was a German poet who
found simple expression for a highly significant idea, “He ever did what
others wished to do.” It was in Germany that the physiognomist Lavater,
exploring Raphael’s features to their very depths, called him with unconscious
aptness the “man of all-embracing vision”. We find Carus and Rochlitz, two critics
who were very near to Goethe, drawing a parallel between Raphael and Mozart.
It was the young German Romantics, the Nazarenes, who with their heart-
blood gave a vitality, as pathetic as it was limited in effectiveness, to the cult
of Raphael, frozen in academic traditions; Novalis perceived the secret
connection, to be sensed yet hardly capable of proof, between him and the
best of the Northerns.
In Germany, the pious Passavant laid the foundations for a knowledge of
him with a biography carried out with a trustworthiness that is truly masterly;
the completion of it, sterile but full of a spirit of devotion, was the work of a
German prince, the Prince Consort, Albert of Coburg, one of the generation of
cultured princes that came after the true connoisseurs among the royalties of
an earlier age. He based his work on his exhaustive collection at Windsor
Castle of reproductions of every stroke of Raphael.
The age of Goethe and the generations in which its influence was perpetuated
divined in Raphael’s creations the embodiment in plastic art of the imagination,
perceiving that he was indispensable; no poetic quality of expression escaped
them, they still felt themselves enriched by an influence from his character
such as could come only from a great poet, a mature poet. For such things the
younger generation had neither eye nor ear; in their search for what would
profit and immediately further their art, they felt they went empty away.
As men, they did not care “to listen to the language of the gods”. Of course,
it no longer fell on their ears from the mediating priests; in academic chairs the
incessantly preached doctrine of Raphael’s validity as a classic had become
mere routine, for they could only talk of the master of religious art, the eternally
youthful and divine Son of Urbino, the great draughtsman. This kind of stereo-
typed, classicist estimate had its sequel in mechanised analysis of this classical
art; it ended, in fact, with a painter of pictures devoid of colour. Thus it was
possible for Raphael to become what might be called an object of ascetic enjoy-
ment for a joyless, Epicurean age; this untroubled, “ever serene” spirit thus
came to be suspect as shallow, like his great partner in the world of music,
Mozart. In truth, the two great profound thinkers withdrew themselves from
such devotees, and left in their hands nothing but masks and shells from which
all life had departed.
The man of the Mediterranean—he could not be defined in the terms
of the town culture of the North. The elemental quality of his expression of
life, the basic foundation of existence continually exercising an influence
2
Yet it was observed how in Germany Raphael’s most famous work continued
again and again to exercise its compelling power; it was a German poet who
found simple expression for a highly significant idea, “He ever did what
others wished to do.” It was in Germany that the physiognomist Lavater,
exploring Raphael’s features to their very depths, called him with unconscious
aptness the “man of all-embracing vision”. We find Carus and Rochlitz, two critics
who were very near to Goethe, drawing a parallel between Raphael and Mozart.
It was the young German Romantics, the Nazarenes, who with their heart-
blood gave a vitality, as pathetic as it was limited in effectiveness, to the cult
of Raphael, frozen in academic traditions; Novalis perceived the secret
connection, to be sensed yet hardly capable of proof, between him and the
best of the Northerns.
In Germany, the pious Passavant laid the foundations for a knowledge of
him with a biography carried out with a trustworthiness that is truly masterly;
the completion of it, sterile but full of a spirit of devotion, was the work of a
German prince, the Prince Consort, Albert of Coburg, one of the generation of
cultured princes that came after the true connoisseurs among the royalties of
an earlier age. He based his work on his exhaustive collection at Windsor
Castle of reproductions of every stroke of Raphael.
The age of Goethe and the generations in which its influence was perpetuated
divined in Raphael’s creations the embodiment in plastic art of the imagination,
perceiving that he was indispensable; no poetic quality of expression escaped
them, they still felt themselves enriched by an influence from his character
such as could come only from a great poet, a mature poet. For such things the
younger generation had neither eye nor ear; in their search for what would
profit and immediately further their art, they felt they went empty away.
As men, they did not care “to listen to the language of the gods”. Of course,
it no longer fell on their ears from the mediating priests; in academic chairs the
incessantly preached doctrine of Raphael’s validity as a classic had become
mere routine, for they could only talk of the master of religious art, the eternally
youthful and divine Son of Urbino, the great draughtsman. This kind of stereo-
typed, classicist estimate had its sequel in mechanised analysis of this classical
art; it ended, in fact, with a painter of pictures devoid of colour. Thus it was
possible for Raphael to become what might be called an object of ascetic enjoy-
ment for a joyless, Epicurean age; this untroubled, “ever serene” spirit thus
came to be suspect as shallow, like his great partner in the world of music,
Mozart. In truth, the two great profound thinkers withdrew themselves from
such devotees, and left in their hands nothing but masks and shells from which
all life had departed.
The man of the Mediterranean—he could not be defined in the terms
of the town culture of the North. The elemental quality of his expression of
life, the basic foundation of existence continually exercising an influence
2