DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0062
RAPHAEL
young warriors stand round Donatello’s St George; a satyr and two nymphs
are gathering fruit; a woman plays an instrument between two naked youths—
all pen-drawings at Oxford, the last-named on a sheet with studies for the
Entombment (Fischel, R. H, 87, 88, 89). It is possible they found employ-
ment somewhere or other—perhaps between windows of a palace in terra verde
or sgraffito—even so, they were no sufficient occupation for the growing self-
consciousness of the born monumental narrator. At home in his adopted city
of Perugia he is spoken of in a document, as early as 1505, as the “best painter”
for works in the monastery of Sant’ Antonio. Beside the Arno the Republic
had no use for him, even when he was to have a recommendation to the
Gonfalonier Soderini from the Court of Urbino. The Republic had enough
artists of mature power of its own; it was only for private worship and civic
self-consciousness that he seemed good enough in Florence. His commissions
were: Madonnas and portraits.
§ The Painter of Madonnas
It was at that time that Raphael first became the Painter of Madonnas.
One might think that the fifteen Florentine pictures of the Virgin reflected back
his fame so dazzlingly on his Umbrian period that this earlier stage could be
forgotten: in Umbria he was the painter of little pictures and great altarpieces
after the manner of Perugino, and only four times did he depict the divine
Mother with her Child.
Painter and client, at Perugia as at Florence, made terms with one another
so strict that they would be quite incomprehensible to-day. Throughout his
Umbrian period the Mother of God had been the mystic miracle, alien to
everyday experience and withdrawn from the world. She can only be thought
of in the figure of a nun who seems to have been called upon to hold in her
hands the most sacred of vessels; there is hardly a sign of maternal solicitude for
the child. Beneath the veil of the mantle that gives her the voluminous form of
those dedicated to Christ her countenance, like an unopened bud, looks down
with downcast eyelids on the child who, himself neither earthly nor childish,
bestows upon the children of the world his benediction and a look as of dreamy
compassion. Around this miracle, in the little Berlin picture, with three figures,
the devoutness of St Jerome and the ecstatic emotion of St Francis compose a
hymn-like strain, permeated by the harmony of blue and cherry red in the
solemnity of an Umbrian twilight.
§ Umbrian Madonnas
In the Diotalevi Madonna (Plate 24) a reverently careful cleaning has in
recent times released the most lovely play of colour, of olive, cherry red and milky
blue, backed by the landscape which is of an azure rising to the deepest inten-
sity; a popular element, important from the point of view of worship, is introduced
44
young warriors stand round Donatello’s St George; a satyr and two nymphs
are gathering fruit; a woman plays an instrument between two naked youths—
all pen-drawings at Oxford, the last-named on a sheet with studies for the
Entombment (Fischel, R. H, 87, 88, 89). It is possible they found employ-
ment somewhere or other—perhaps between windows of a palace in terra verde
or sgraffito—even so, they were no sufficient occupation for the growing self-
consciousness of the born monumental narrator. At home in his adopted city
of Perugia he is spoken of in a document, as early as 1505, as the “best painter”
for works in the monastery of Sant’ Antonio. Beside the Arno the Republic
had no use for him, even when he was to have a recommendation to the
Gonfalonier Soderini from the Court of Urbino. The Republic had enough
artists of mature power of its own; it was only for private worship and civic
self-consciousness that he seemed good enough in Florence. His commissions
were: Madonnas and portraits.
§ The Painter of Madonnas
It was at that time that Raphael first became the Painter of Madonnas.
One might think that the fifteen Florentine pictures of the Virgin reflected back
his fame so dazzlingly on his Umbrian period that this earlier stage could be
forgotten: in Umbria he was the painter of little pictures and great altarpieces
after the manner of Perugino, and only four times did he depict the divine
Mother with her Child.
Painter and client, at Perugia as at Florence, made terms with one another
so strict that they would be quite incomprehensible to-day. Throughout his
Umbrian period the Mother of God had been the mystic miracle, alien to
everyday experience and withdrawn from the world. She can only be thought
of in the figure of a nun who seems to have been called upon to hold in her
hands the most sacred of vessels; there is hardly a sign of maternal solicitude for
the child. Beneath the veil of the mantle that gives her the voluminous form of
those dedicated to Christ her countenance, like an unopened bud, looks down
with downcast eyelids on the child who, himself neither earthly nor childish,
bestows upon the children of the world his benediction and a look as of dreamy
compassion. Around this miracle, in the little Berlin picture, with three figures,
the devoutness of St Jerome and the ecstatic emotion of St Francis compose a
hymn-like strain, permeated by the harmony of blue and cherry red in the
solemnity of an Umbrian twilight.
§ Umbrian Madonnas
In the Diotalevi Madonna (Plate 24) a reverently careful cleaning has in
recent times released the most lovely play of colour, of olive, cherry red and milky
blue, backed by the landscape which is of an azure rising to the deepest inten-
sity; a popular element, important from the point of view of worship, is introduced
44