DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0051
APPRENTICESHIP
It is this Raphael whose career we have to follow, not the pupil of Perugino, whom
Florence seems for a while to have diverted into its academic paths—perhaps
the Marchigiano, who in his drawings never lost himself, and who found him-
self again triumphantly in Rome as a painter.
Vasari says, of the early works of Raphael done for Citta di Castello: “chi
non a pratica” could only too easily confuse them with those of Perugino. We
must therefore acquire this “pratica”, so as not to be detained by futile talk of
discipleship and influences; we must seek to pass from the attainments of learn-
ing to what is inborn, to the fundamental qualities that absorb everything they
encounter and group all impressions in and around themselves; in the last
resort it is these that triumph in all periods of his life—as what is really original
in him. This is a duty we owe to him and to ourselves as well.
§ Pax Vobiscum, Brescia
In the small picture of Christ blessing, at Brescia (Plate 19), we certainly
meet with echoes of the beautiful Gothic stained-glass harmony of Perugia: the
olive-toned flesh-tints, the cherry red in the mantle, in front of the blue distance
and the firmament passing upwards to a deep azure. But what use Raphael makes
of these elements from Perugino’s teaching! Has it really struck anyone before
that Raphael is very ready to avoid the monotony of the legs in his devotional
figures? In the Coronation of the Virgin he introduces the sarcophagus slant-
ways in the midst of the row of Apostles—where Perugino, the slave of Gothic,
would show the lower limbs of a dozen figures. Raphael overcame the danger
of unison, the hereditary weakness of the last generations of Gothic, which
Perugino revived because he thought it permissible as an expression of reli-
gious faith, of orthodoxy even.
In this half-figure of the Redeemer he merely emphasised the rhythm of
walking, the subtle outward bend above the leg that carries the weight of the
body, the slackened play of the hip above the unburdened backdrawn foot—
a counterpoise that is continued in the arms, one raised in blessing, the other
laid across the body, also in the advancing and receding curves of the body; it
extends even to the twofold slant of the head, forward and sideways. And
emphasis of colour combines with this rhythmic vitality of the forms and the
beauty of the enclosing lines to produce a ritual dance of forms; the deep red
of the mantle surrounds the flesh-colour of the torso with a subtle ellipse of
which the course is continued in the shadow on the disengaged shoulder and
the arm; there is a similar echo of it in the oval of the face, and in the swelling
form of the arm raised in blessing, emphasised by the cloak and the falling hair.
Miraculously musical in its effect is this motive of the oblique rectangle formed
by the red spots on the left hand and the wound in the side with the drop of
blood on the temple and the stigma in the blessing hand—sweeping obliquely
out of the vertical like the head, with its regular lines, almost Gothic in their
33
It is this Raphael whose career we have to follow, not the pupil of Perugino, whom
Florence seems for a while to have diverted into its academic paths—perhaps
the Marchigiano, who in his drawings never lost himself, and who found him-
self again triumphantly in Rome as a painter.
Vasari says, of the early works of Raphael done for Citta di Castello: “chi
non a pratica” could only too easily confuse them with those of Perugino. We
must therefore acquire this “pratica”, so as not to be detained by futile talk of
discipleship and influences; we must seek to pass from the attainments of learn-
ing to what is inborn, to the fundamental qualities that absorb everything they
encounter and group all impressions in and around themselves; in the last
resort it is these that triumph in all periods of his life—as what is really original
in him. This is a duty we owe to him and to ourselves as well.
§ Pax Vobiscum, Brescia
In the small picture of Christ blessing, at Brescia (Plate 19), we certainly
meet with echoes of the beautiful Gothic stained-glass harmony of Perugia: the
olive-toned flesh-tints, the cherry red in the mantle, in front of the blue distance
and the firmament passing upwards to a deep azure. But what use Raphael makes
of these elements from Perugino’s teaching! Has it really struck anyone before
that Raphael is very ready to avoid the monotony of the legs in his devotional
figures? In the Coronation of the Virgin he introduces the sarcophagus slant-
ways in the midst of the row of Apostles—where Perugino, the slave of Gothic,
would show the lower limbs of a dozen figures. Raphael overcame the danger
of unison, the hereditary weakness of the last generations of Gothic, which
Perugino revived because he thought it permissible as an expression of reli-
gious faith, of orthodoxy even.
In this half-figure of the Redeemer he merely emphasised the rhythm of
walking, the subtle outward bend above the leg that carries the weight of the
body, the slackened play of the hip above the unburdened backdrawn foot—
a counterpoise that is continued in the arms, one raised in blessing, the other
laid across the body, also in the advancing and receding curves of the body; it
extends even to the twofold slant of the head, forward and sideways. And
emphasis of colour combines with this rhythmic vitality of the forms and the
beauty of the enclosing lines to produce a ritual dance of forms; the deep red
of the mantle surrounds the flesh-colour of the torso with a subtle ellipse of
which the course is continued in the shadow on the disengaged shoulder and
the arm; there is a similar echo of it in the oval of the face, and in the swelling
form of the arm raised in blessing, emphasised by the cloak and the falling hair.
Miraculously musical in its effect is this motive of the oblique rectangle formed
by the red spots on the left hand and the wound in the side with the drop of
blood on the temple and the stigma in the blessing hand—sweeping obliquely
out of the vertical like the head, with its regular lines, almost Gothic in their
33