DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0036
RAPHAEL
endowments for giving almost excessive satisfaction to such desires. To him
had been given a sense for the figure exalted above the plane of everyday life;
for his sensibility, every frame had to be filled in its entire extent with the
expressive pattern that aided devotion. The secret was easily revealed to him
of gaining an effect by means of figure-mosaic in large panes of glass, with
their mineral brilliance as little broken up as possible, tuned to a simple and
strong harmony of colour. He understood the captivating charm of Early
Christian and Byzantine painting; its deep impression he had found vital when
still on his quest in Rome and now consciously renewed, just as the strong,
intimate effect of Northern engravers must have affected him when they filled
the narrow limits of their plates to the full with gestures of devotion.
§ Glass-painting
All that was best in his understanding of glass-painting was communicated
to his easel-pictures. He now became the Umbrian—the Perugian, in fact—
that he was; the truth was now proved of the doctrine of space learned in his
youth from Piero della Francesca, and of the training in highly expressive
outline acquired from the hereditary school.
The Perugian landscape with its solemn twilight colouring in the hour
before sunrise, and the deep tone of the sky above range beyond range of
mountains of ever softer blue, is now combined with the coloured silhouette
of the figure filled with a spirit of passionate or dreamy devotion. Undecorated
archways of sweeping span or vaults upon plain pillars make a framework
within the frame, or little slender trees divide the distance and give touches of
vitality to the distant view on either side of the isolated figure; or saints in
groups or often merely in rows stand and sway in the simplest rhythms in the
foreground of the landscape. They stand out, in great passages of unbroken
yet soft colour, in front of the wide zones of deep blue of the mountains and
sky. There are compositions like the Assumption of the Virgin, from Vallom-
brosa, that have the effect of being divided, by invisible tracery, like one of the
mighty finestroni of Gothic churches, or intentionally renew the overpoweringly
sacramental austerity of Byzantine painting.
For a painter of the school of the Marches colour could never be without
expression. Now—in this new phase—it gains such strength through purification
of its elements that the harmony of figure and background, and of red, green,
milky blue and violet against the azure of the distance, have their like only in
the windows of Northern Late Gothic choirs. An altarpiece of Perugino in its
original place even to-day has an effect of space opened up, and of reality captured
by means of the melody of its lines and colours. Every other painting pales,
in the most literal sense, before the Vision of St Bernard at Munich.
It is symptomatic that an aesthetic based on impressionism, with its material
interests, disparaged this phase of his art as reactionary; but for similar reasons
18
endowments for giving almost excessive satisfaction to such desires. To him
had been given a sense for the figure exalted above the plane of everyday life;
for his sensibility, every frame had to be filled in its entire extent with the
expressive pattern that aided devotion. The secret was easily revealed to him
of gaining an effect by means of figure-mosaic in large panes of glass, with
their mineral brilliance as little broken up as possible, tuned to a simple and
strong harmony of colour. He understood the captivating charm of Early
Christian and Byzantine painting; its deep impression he had found vital when
still on his quest in Rome and now consciously renewed, just as the strong,
intimate effect of Northern engravers must have affected him when they filled
the narrow limits of their plates to the full with gestures of devotion.
§ Glass-painting
All that was best in his understanding of glass-painting was communicated
to his easel-pictures. He now became the Umbrian—the Perugian, in fact—
that he was; the truth was now proved of the doctrine of space learned in his
youth from Piero della Francesca, and of the training in highly expressive
outline acquired from the hereditary school.
The Perugian landscape with its solemn twilight colouring in the hour
before sunrise, and the deep tone of the sky above range beyond range of
mountains of ever softer blue, is now combined with the coloured silhouette
of the figure filled with a spirit of passionate or dreamy devotion. Undecorated
archways of sweeping span or vaults upon plain pillars make a framework
within the frame, or little slender trees divide the distance and give touches of
vitality to the distant view on either side of the isolated figure; or saints in
groups or often merely in rows stand and sway in the simplest rhythms in the
foreground of the landscape. They stand out, in great passages of unbroken
yet soft colour, in front of the wide zones of deep blue of the mountains and
sky. There are compositions like the Assumption of the Virgin, from Vallom-
brosa, that have the effect of being divided, by invisible tracery, like one of the
mighty finestroni of Gothic churches, or intentionally renew the overpoweringly
sacramental austerity of Byzantine painting.
For a painter of the school of the Marches colour could never be without
expression. Now—in this new phase—it gains such strength through purification
of its elements that the harmony of figure and background, and of red, green,
milky blue and violet against the azure of the distance, have their like only in
the windows of Northern Late Gothic choirs. An altarpiece of Perugino in its
original place even to-day has an effect of space opened up, and of reality captured
by means of the melody of its lines and colours. Every other painting pales,
in the most literal sense, before the Vision of St Bernard at Munich.
It is symptomatic that an aesthetic based on impressionism, with its material
interests, disparaged this phase of his art as reactionary; but for similar reasons
18