DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0037
RAPHAEL’S MASTERS
the age of Perugino was responsive to the sacramental in this style as to an inward
compulsion. It arose out of the deepest stirrings in the consciousness of a whole
epoch. It was now no longer Florence or Umbria but a spiritually renewed
humanity that created this style for itself.
Here the mature Perugino follows Perugino the youth; instead of the
teaching of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca, the pious wisdom of ancient
ecclesiasticism again holds authority. In the North, the arresting narrative of
Roger van der Weyden had long been listened to instead of the matter-of-fact
Jan van Eyck; Conrad Witz had been followed by Schongauer. And suddenly
a universal conception of art opens up, strange and exciting. Out of the dimness
of a distant past and of a tradition still incomplete the same conception takes shape,
both north and south of the Alps, presenting itself in both regions as in a mirage.
At Nuremberg, Albert Durer the Elder has no other wish than to send his son
“in die Lernung”—to be taught—to the great new Gothic master of Colmar,
Schongauer; and however much Vasari’s narrative may seem questionable in the
light of sober examination, one thing remains certain: Giovanni Santi showed by
his ideas and his words his reverence for Perugino, and five years after his death
we find his son as the best assistant to the master in his reactionary attitude in
matters ecclesiastical. Destiny intended that those who gave new life to art
in North and South should receive their teaching from the revivers of Gothic—
or rather, the creators of a new spiritual inwardness and inspiration in art.
After half a century of confusion, forces rejuvenated and rallied give rise anew
to the monumental style.
NOTE—Raphael’s Teachers
The gap has to be bridged between Raphael’s twelfth year, in which he lost
his father, and his seventeenth, when we find him as trained assistant of Perugino.
Morelli (Galerie zu Berlin, p. 200 seq.) supposed that he had discovered
Raphael’s first teacher in the Bolognese, Timoteo Viti. No proof of this is
brought forward; it is true that during this time Timoteo was settled at Urbino,
but the pictures we possess by him (at Milan, Bologna and Urbino) are so
badly preserved that conclusions drawn from them as to his style are very
questionable. His Noli Me Tangere at Cagli shows him as being peculiarly
weak and decidedly indebted to the Entombment of Raphael (who had meanwhile
come to maturity). Timoteo’s Magdalen is slavishly borrowed from a study for
the Entombment which he perhaps possessed. He belongs to the race of those
impersonal hangers-on who keep to the manner prevalent in the time of their
youth and cannot profit even by drawings and motives of the great companions
of their young days. If he really had a share, as Vasari reports, in Raphael’s
Roman works at Santa Maria della Pace and is to be regarded as the painter of
the Sibyls above the Prophets, he can only have worked in the role of an assistant
19
the age of Perugino was responsive to the sacramental in this style as to an inward
compulsion. It arose out of the deepest stirrings in the consciousness of a whole
epoch. It was now no longer Florence or Umbria but a spiritually renewed
humanity that created this style for itself.
Here the mature Perugino follows Perugino the youth; instead of the
teaching of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca, the pious wisdom of ancient
ecclesiasticism again holds authority. In the North, the arresting narrative of
Roger van der Weyden had long been listened to instead of the matter-of-fact
Jan van Eyck; Conrad Witz had been followed by Schongauer. And suddenly
a universal conception of art opens up, strange and exciting. Out of the dimness
of a distant past and of a tradition still incomplete the same conception takes shape,
both north and south of the Alps, presenting itself in both regions as in a mirage.
At Nuremberg, Albert Durer the Elder has no other wish than to send his son
“in die Lernung”—to be taught—to the great new Gothic master of Colmar,
Schongauer; and however much Vasari’s narrative may seem questionable in the
light of sober examination, one thing remains certain: Giovanni Santi showed by
his ideas and his words his reverence for Perugino, and five years after his death
we find his son as the best assistant to the master in his reactionary attitude in
matters ecclesiastical. Destiny intended that those who gave new life to art
in North and South should receive their teaching from the revivers of Gothic—
or rather, the creators of a new spiritual inwardness and inspiration in art.
After half a century of confusion, forces rejuvenated and rallied give rise anew
to the monumental style.
NOTE—Raphael’s Teachers
The gap has to be bridged between Raphael’s twelfth year, in which he lost
his father, and his seventeenth, when we find him as trained assistant of Perugino.
Morelli (Galerie zu Berlin, p. 200 seq.) supposed that he had discovered
Raphael’s first teacher in the Bolognese, Timoteo Viti. No proof of this is
brought forward; it is true that during this time Timoteo was settled at Urbino,
but the pictures we possess by him (at Milan, Bologna and Urbino) are so
badly preserved that conclusions drawn from them as to his style are very
questionable. His Noli Me Tangere at Cagli shows him as being peculiarly
weak and decidedly indebted to the Entombment of Raphael (who had meanwhile
come to maturity). Timoteo’s Magdalen is slavishly borrowed from a study for
the Entombment which he perhaps possessed. He belongs to the race of those
impersonal hangers-on who keep to the manner prevalent in the time of their
youth and cannot profit even by drawings and motives of the great companions
of their young days. If he really had a share, as Vasari reports, in Raphael’s
Roman works at Santa Maria della Pace and is to be regarded as the painter of
the Sibyls above the Prophets, he can only have worked in the role of an assistant
19