DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0076
RAPHAEL
In Angelo Doni’s case Raphael’s portrait of him means at least his vindica-
tion in the eyes of posterity, for this couple are of no exceptional celebrity. It
seems, according to Vasari,' that the husband found too expensive the tondo
of the Holy Family painted for him by Michael Angelo. As to this, Jacob
Burckhardt, who judged him from Raphael’s portrait to be a man of generous
disposition, expressed a suspicion that his wife had something to do with this
“too expensive”; but confirmed bachelors, even if they are named Burckhardt,
must not always be believed when they express their views as to the wives of
their acquaintances. Nevertheless, from all appearances, Raphael was of a
similar opinion; in the execution of this commission, at all events, he put forth
his best efforts as a painter of female portraits. Delicate harmonies permeate
the entire work; instead of the brown shading of the companion portrait we
have here grey, suffused with luminous, silvery glazing beneath the chin; the
little veil over the shoulders and corsage, the moire on the bodice, even the
folds of the skirt, are rendered in little touches of transparent colour, and
contrast is provided to this delicate colouring by the solid opposition of the
sleeve material, with its lights laid on thickly on the ridges of the folds. The
unlovely hands are done with the utmost care; bold fore-shortening gives them
vitality, the fingers being touched with lights in pink applied as in a drawing.
The whole is seen against the soft background of the landscape. It is an experi-
ment, not yet entirely successful, but already definitely superior to the technique
which meant, even for Raphael, an indispensable transition stage.
§ Louvre Drawing of a Girl
For he is a born painter, even where there are no colours. What paintings
he can execute with a pen charged with bistre! This, and not the outline and
the window borrowed from Leonardo’s Mona Lisa seems to be the essential thing
about the little sketch in the Louvre (R. II, 80). The inscrutably captivating
prototype seems actually to be surpassed, in breathing animation, by the little
drawing, perhaps because the coming master of a younger generation was
destined to intensify the innovations in Leonardo’s miraculous work. The
slight forward stoop, the small distance between the hands and the bust, the
projection of the breathing body, the chin standing out free from the neck, the
rounding of the shoulder in front of the window-seat near by and the hazy
distant landscape, the secret which gives to this mouth a “fluidity”* in the
Praxitilean sense, and the certainty that these commanding eyes can rove—
all this is conveyed merely by the varying thickness of the penstrokes;
one is kept constantly on the move within the bounds of the little sheet of
paper.
We find him, elsewhere also, in drawings, as a “ Frauenlob”, one who extolled
♦The reference is to the epithet v-ypos (literally “moist”) used by Callistratus and Lucian of
the treatment of the human figure by Praxiteles.—-Translator.
58
In Angelo Doni’s case Raphael’s portrait of him means at least his vindica-
tion in the eyes of posterity, for this couple are of no exceptional celebrity. It
seems, according to Vasari,' that the husband found too expensive the tondo
of the Holy Family painted for him by Michael Angelo. As to this, Jacob
Burckhardt, who judged him from Raphael’s portrait to be a man of generous
disposition, expressed a suspicion that his wife had something to do with this
“too expensive”; but confirmed bachelors, even if they are named Burckhardt,
must not always be believed when they express their views as to the wives of
their acquaintances. Nevertheless, from all appearances, Raphael was of a
similar opinion; in the execution of this commission, at all events, he put forth
his best efforts as a painter of female portraits. Delicate harmonies permeate
the entire work; instead of the brown shading of the companion portrait we
have here grey, suffused with luminous, silvery glazing beneath the chin; the
little veil over the shoulders and corsage, the moire on the bodice, even the
folds of the skirt, are rendered in little touches of transparent colour, and
contrast is provided to this delicate colouring by the solid opposition of the
sleeve material, with its lights laid on thickly on the ridges of the folds. The
unlovely hands are done with the utmost care; bold fore-shortening gives them
vitality, the fingers being touched with lights in pink applied as in a drawing.
The whole is seen against the soft background of the landscape. It is an experi-
ment, not yet entirely successful, but already definitely superior to the technique
which meant, even for Raphael, an indispensable transition stage.
§ Louvre Drawing of a Girl
For he is a born painter, even where there are no colours. What paintings
he can execute with a pen charged with bistre! This, and not the outline and
the window borrowed from Leonardo’s Mona Lisa seems to be the essential thing
about the little sketch in the Louvre (R. II, 80). The inscrutably captivating
prototype seems actually to be surpassed, in breathing animation, by the little
drawing, perhaps because the coming master of a younger generation was
destined to intensify the innovations in Leonardo’s miraculous work. The
slight forward stoop, the small distance between the hands and the bust, the
projection of the breathing body, the chin standing out free from the neck, the
rounding of the shoulder in front of the window-seat near by and the hazy
distant landscape, the secret which gives to this mouth a “fluidity”* in the
Praxitilean sense, and the certainty that these commanding eyes can rove—
all this is conveyed merely by the varying thickness of the penstrokes;
one is kept constantly on the move within the bounds of the little sheet of
paper.
We find him, elsewhere also, in drawings, as a “ Frauenlob”, one who extolled
♦The reference is to the epithet v-ypos (literally “moist”) used by Callistratus and Lucian of
the treatment of the human figure by Praxiteles.—-Translator.
58