DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0045
APPRENTICESHIP
(Plates 12, 16), advancing with a gentle swell and dying-away of the outline, is
something unprecedented in the Quattrocento and was never again surpassed by
Raphael himself. It was a born draughtsman who painted the head of the doubt-
ing Thomas in the picture, with the Peruginesque convention of the upward gaze,
but who in the study at Lille (Plate 14), in a few strokes lightly skimming the
space, captured the tumult of the youthful soul, overcome by the revelation; fore-
shortenings play a part, a raising of the lips, a dilation of the nostrils, a throbbing
in the hollow of the neck (the forward thrust of the neck is precisely the signature
of Raphael, and continued to be so). The calligraphy is tumultuous, borne on the
wings of his own sensibility, when he sets down with powerful strokes of the crayon
the ecstasy of St James (Plate 15). Though always tied down to the same manner
of composition in paint, as if under the eyes of Perugino, he knew how to render
alike the sweet and the passionate, the bitter; this versatility of technique and
behaviour was peculiarly his among the great draughtsmen. But it is never the
outline or framework, always the expression in its entirety, of which he portrays
on the paper the rhythms echoing in atmosphere and space. Being born,
with these peculiar qualities, to be a draughtsman, he became one because he
was a born painter.
§ The Painter of the Dramatic
To-day we have the good fortune, unknown to Vasari, of knowing Raphael’s
earliest little painting: the Painter of the Dramatic is there, complete, before
our eyes. Here, in these small-scale works, there was nothing to check him, no
model of the master to follow, no exactness of execution such as was required
in large paintings; it may be that he did not yet consider himself professionally
ripe for the monumental. Fra Angelico also often betrayed in predella pictures
aspirations as a painter which he renounced in the devotional picture; in the
former many a dream could be realised swiftly, as in drawings.
This compactness of pictorial narration, the indissoluble and indispensable
interaction of colour and subject, the inescapable filling of the space with
harmony of colour, Raphael only recaptured so arrestingly in the Second
Stanza, after many a detour and even many a defection from himself. But the
compelling power in the Heliodorus and the Mass of Bolsena, in the Deliver-
ance of St Peter and the Attila, was only the sequel and the fruit of this new
painting, already in early blossom, that conceives space and figures as linked
together by colour.
He dared to believe himself capable of filling with life the narrow frame of a
picture intended for a private apartment, in a manner which was already a
matter of course to him in drawing, within the limits of the sheet of paper. And
here, with these gems of painting a few inches square before us, dependence
upon any other work as a model is unthinkable, or any kind of influence
whatsoever.
27
(Plates 12, 16), advancing with a gentle swell and dying-away of the outline, is
something unprecedented in the Quattrocento and was never again surpassed by
Raphael himself. It was a born draughtsman who painted the head of the doubt-
ing Thomas in the picture, with the Peruginesque convention of the upward gaze,
but who in the study at Lille (Plate 14), in a few strokes lightly skimming the
space, captured the tumult of the youthful soul, overcome by the revelation; fore-
shortenings play a part, a raising of the lips, a dilation of the nostrils, a throbbing
in the hollow of the neck (the forward thrust of the neck is precisely the signature
of Raphael, and continued to be so). The calligraphy is tumultuous, borne on the
wings of his own sensibility, when he sets down with powerful strokes of the crayon
the ecstasy of St James (Plate 15). Though always tied down to the same manner
of composition in paint, as if under the eyes of Perugino, he knew how to render
alike the sweet and the passionate, the bitter; this versatility of technique and
behaviour was peculiarly his among the great draughtsmen. But it is never the
outline or framework, always the expression in its entirety, of which he portrays
on the paper the rhythms echoing in atmosphere and space. Being born,
with these peculiar qualities, to be a draughtsman, he became one because he
was a born painter.
§ The Painter of the Dramatic
To-day we have the good fortune, unknown to Vasari, of knowing Raphael’s
earliest little painting: the Painter of the Dramatic is there, complete, before
our eyes. Here, in these small-scale works, there was nothing to check him, no
model of the master to follow, no exactness of execution such as was required
in large paintings; it may be that he did not yet consider himself professionally
ripe for the monumental. Fra Angelico also often betrayed in predella pictures
aspirations as a painter which he renounced in the devotional picture; in the
former many a dream could be realised swiftly, as in drawings.
This compactness of pictorial narration, the indissoluble and indispensable
interaction of colour and subject, the inescapable filling of the space with
harmony of colour, Raphael only recaptured so arrestingly in the Second
Stanza, after many a detour and even many a defection from himself. But the
compelling power in the Heliodorus and the Mass of Bolsena, in the Deliver-
ance of St Peter and the Attila, was only the sequel and the fruit of this new
painting, already in early blossom, that conceives space and figures as linked
together by colour.
He dared to believe himself capable of filling with life the narrow frame of a
picture intended for a private apartment, in a manner which was already a
matter of course to him in drawing, within the limits of the sheet of paper. And
here, with these gems of painting a few inches square before us, dependence
upon any other work as a model is unthinkable, or any kind of influence
whatsoever.
27