DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0044
RAPHAEL
creatures. This boy seems to be born to be something more than the master of
a workshop. “La maniera del disegnare e le belle maniere e costumi”, Vasari
tells us, fascinated the Perugian master, and he pronounced a judgment on the
“putto” brought to him by Giovanni Santi that future events were to confirm.
The complete painter is really contained in this chalk drawing—a wonder-
fully easy and yet energetic interaction of forms, up and down, to and fro, a
feeling for movement and existence, that our eye enjoys in the play of the
individual forms and in their slight foreshortening in nose, lip and eyelid, in
the ease with which, apart from obvious mistakes, deliberate deviations from
nature have been achieved for the sake of expression. A slight excess of means
employed contrasts delightfully with that sure knowledge which makes a success
as a matter of course of relief and spatiality. No portrait by Perugino, not even
the beautiful boy with brown jerkin and blue cap in the Uffizi, can show this
coherence of all the parts. The great Umbrian was able to attain his profound
effects when, as he did especially at this period, he built up his figures and
heads out of details that gave expression; his requirements in the way of expres-
sion were still—or once more—those of Gothic: they were satisfied by an almost
needless emphasis on eyes, nose and mouth, and by merely indicating the bony
structure and flesh between. Thus his figures also at that time were structures
of draped attitudes, his fingers often mere members fitting into one another.
Here, in this drawing of a boy, a breathing whole takes shape, full of life to
the very hair. A universal sensibility, though as yet unconscious, distinguishes
the young draughtsman from the master, preoccupied with the practice of his
craft, whose experience and skill as a painter are nevertheless indispensable to
him.
The writer of the Lives seems to have been better informed than his recent
critics; for many of his statements about Raphael’s youth have been confirmed
almost by written documents. All he knew of Raphael’s work of this period
was the great altarpieces. We can understand that they seemed to him, especi-
ally for the uninitiated, to resemble those of Perugino in their painting, to the
point of confusion. They are painted in accordance with studio customs and
guild usages tested in their effectiveness for churches by the master—the beginner
was perhaps bound by the commission in externals also to keep to Perugino’s
models. But even in these works he seems to show an innate independence and
even maturity as soon as he designs and draws.
§ Drawings of the Coronation of the Virgin
The drawings that have been preserved of the Coronation of the Virgin
(Plate 22) are perhaps the most precious of all Raphael’s drawings (R. Z-
they are drawings of the figure in silverpoint on paper with milky white surface
after fellow-students in costume of the period. The manner in which the pencil
feels its way along the contours of the figures and the angel musicians are modelled
26
creatures. This boy seems to be born to be something more than the master of
a workshop. “La maniera del disegnare e le belle maniere e costumi”, Vasari
tells us, fascinated the Perugian master, and he pronounced a judgment on the
“putto” brought to him by Giovanni Santi that future events were to confirm.
The complete painter is really contained in this chalk drawing—a wonder-
fully easy and yet energetic interaction of forms, up and down, to and fro, a
feeling for movement and existence, that our eye enjoys in the play of the
individual forms and in their slight foreshortening in nose, lip and eyelid, in
the ease with which, apart from obvious mistakes, deliberate deviations from
nature have been achieved for the sake of expression. A slight excess of means
employed contrasts delightfully with that sure knowledge which makes a success
as a matter of course of relief and spatiality. No portrait by Perugino, not even
the beautiful boy with brown jerkin and blue cap in the Uffizi, can show this
coherence of all the parts. The great Umbrian was able to attain his profound
effects when, as he did especially at this period, he built up his figures and
heads out of details that gave expression; his requirements in the way of expres-
sion were still—or once more—those of Gothic: they were satisfied by an almost
needless emphasis on eyes, nose and mouth, and by merely indicating the bony
structure and flesh between. Thus his figures also at that time were structures
of draped attitudes, his fingers often mere members fitting into one another.
Here, in this drawing of a boy, a breathing whole takes shape, full of life to
the very hair. A universal sensibility, though as yet unconscious, distinguishes
the young draughtsman from the master, preoccupied with the practice of his
craft, whose experience and skill as a painter are nevertheless indispensable to
him.
The writer of the Lives seems to have been better informed than his recent
critics; for many of his statements about Raphael’s youth have been confirmed
almost by written documents. All he knew of Raphael’s work of this period
was the great altarpieces. We can understand that they seemed to him, especi-
ally for the uninitiated, to resemble those of Perugino in their painting, to the
point of confusion. They are painted in accordance with studio customs and
guild usages tested in their effectiveness for churches by the master—the beginner
was perhaps bound by the commission in externals also to keep to Perugino’s
models. But even in these works he seems to show an innate independence and
even maturity as soon as he designs and draws.
§ Drawings of the Coronation of the Virgin
The drawings that have been preserved of the Coronation of the Virgin
(Plate 22) are perhaps the most precious of all Raphael’s drawings (R. Z-
they are drawings of the figure in silverpoint on paper with milky white surface
after fellow-students in costume of the period. The manner in which the pencil
feels its way along the contours of the figures and the angel musicians are modelled
26