DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0063
FLORENCE
by the young St John into the sacred group of Mother and Child. This is per-
haps the earliest of his Madonnas. The small three-figure picture is followed next
by the Solly Madonna (Plate 25), of a more secular type by comparison, render-
ing homage to this chosen protectress of the holy Child as in a mystic love-ritual;
the veil falls back from the clear, brown hair of her head and the slender neck,
framing like a niche, and exposing for reverent admiration, her delicate build
and the graceful pose of the hand with the breviary. At the same time, in the
landscape, the world looks in upon the scene more distinctly—in these first
productions of Raphael’s own hand there are already traces of a totality of
creativeness: figure and landscape are alive, full of feeling, in an atmosphere also
governed by the same principles. In the Conestabile della Staffa Madonna
(Plate 26) it is a spring day, the branches already astir, snow still on the moun-
tains, and the soft breeze playing over the surface of the waters, seeming to
have invited this mother with her child to wander through the meadows. This
exquisite circular picture, formerly in the Hermitage at Leningrad, painted
on a panel out of which the frame with the flanking griffoni of Perugia (the
griffins from the city arms), spreading out downwards, was carved at the same
time, served of course, originally, to crown a shrine. The rhythm of the forms in the
circular space, fitting in with the almost Schongauer-like sweep of the trees, was
formerly more pronounced in its effect—too much so perhaps in the eyes of the
painter, and monotonous also, when the Madonna held an apple instead of the
book; this came to view in the groundwork of the painting when the picture was
transferred on to canvas. Even so, everything, from the neck of the^672^mvz bowed
in meditation to the pose of her arms and the lights on the fingers holding the
book, contributes to the circular effect; the accord of the profile and the rhythmic
pacing of the figure help to produce that delicate undulating movement which
exposes for us to see a fragment of landscape, with its soft-flowing lines of
mountain and lake, and seems ready with the next step to shut out from view
what lies in front of her. In its lyrical quality also we experience an action which
draws the eye to it and after it, and which must have been entirely convincing
to those of a believing disposition.
Here the power of the later mysticism is once more alive, without the
tendency to wander off into spasmodic reconstruction which we find in Crivelli
and the Master of St Bartholomew and even in Botticelli, rather in all its
purity, as in the self-composed masters of the North. In the case of Schongauer
and Memling there was no need of their minor motives—the man on a white
horse in the landscape, the masses of rocks grown over with bushes, and the
pointed churchtowers, to remind one of them. The inward poetic surrender is
entirely their own, as is also the faithful craftsmanship in the application of the
colours which is inseparable from it. It is still operative in the earlier of the
Florentine devotional pictures, when the forms are already adapting themselves
to the wider world beside the Arno.
45
by the young St John into the sacred group of Mother and Child. This is per-
haps the earliest of his Madonnas. The small three-figure picture is followed next
by the Solly Madonna (Plate 25), of a more secular type by comparison, render-
ing homage to this chosen protectress of the holy Child as in a mystic love-ritual;
the veil falls back from the clear, brown hair of her head and the slender neck,
framing like a niche, and exposing for reverent admiration, her delicate build
and the graceful pose of the hand with the breviary. At the same time, in the
landscape, the world looks in upon the scene more distinctly—in these first
productions of Raphael’s own hand there are already traces of a totality of
creativeness: figure and landscape are alive, full of feeling, in an atmosphere also
governed by the same principles. In the Conestabile della Staffa Madonna
(Plate 26) it is a spring day, the branches already astir, snow still on the moun-
tains, and the soft breeze playing over the surface of the waters, seeming to
have invited this mother with her child to wander through the meadows. This
exquisite circular picture, formerly in the Hermitage at Leningrad, painted
on a panel out of which the frame with the flanking griffoni of Perugia (the
griffins from the city arms), spreading out downwards, was carved at the same
time, served of course, originally, to crown a shrine. The rhythm of the forms in the
circular space, fitting in with the almost Schongauer-like sweep of the trees, was
formerly more pronounced in its effect—too much so perhaps in the eyes of the
painter, and monotonous also, when the Madonna held an apple instead of the
book; this came to view in the groundwork of the painting when the picture was
transferred on to canvas. Even so, everything, from the neck of the^672^mvz bowed
in meditation to the pose of her arms and the lights on the fingers holding the
book, contributes to the circular effect; the accord of the profile and the rhythmic
pacing of the figure help to produce that delicate undulating movement which
exposes for us to see a fragment of landscape, with its soft-flowing lines of
mountain and lake, and seems ready with the next step to shut out from view
what lies in front of her. In its lyrical quality also we experience an action which
draws the eye to it and after it, and which must have been entirely convincing
to those of a believing disposition.
Here the power of the later mysticism is once more alive, without the
tendency to wander off into spasmodic reconstruction which we find in Crivelli
and the Master of St Bartholomew and even in Botticelli, rather in all its
purity, as in the self-composed masters of the North. In the case of Schongauer
and Memling there was no need of their minor motives—the man on a white
horse in the landscape, the masses of rocks grown over with bushes, and the
pointed churchtowers, to remind one of them. The inward poetic surrender is
entirely their own, as is also the faithful craftsmanship in the application of the
colours which is inseparable from it. It is still operative in the earlier of the
Florentine devotional pictures, when the forms are already adapting themselves
to the wider world beside the Arno.
45