DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0090
RAPHAEL
another suite of saloons with paintings. He does not as a rule say to himself
that, in combination with this room, they have, in their position, some peculiar
significance, nor does he think of asking why here in particular this must be the
case. We shall need first to investigate again, and acknowledge anew, the
inward inevitableness of the art of the past; we shall have to reconstruct this
room as it was in Raphael’s time in compliance with the wishes of the Pope who
gave the commission, and we shall not penetrate to the vital nerve of these
pictures and hear the stimulating accents of their language until we know what
message they were meant to convey. Art in ancient interiors has always a
purpose; the form and purpose of the room were inseparably bound up together.
The lining with intarsia-work by Fra Giovanni da Verona on the dado
below is part of the original effect. From the shaded colours of the woodwork
in the ancient sacristy cupboards of Santa Maria in Organo, in Fra Giovanni’s
native city, we can still get an idea of what was lost, in warmth of tone and
the beautiful framework below Raphael’s paintings in this room, when the
coloured woodwork, fitted together with such ingenuity, was destroyed by the
bivouac fires of the Imperial soldiery in 1527. The present imitations and the
bronze-coloured pictures amongst simulated architecture, painted in chalky
fresco by Perino del Vaga, offer no substitute for the original warm harmony
with the wall-paintings. In front were stands with books, as surviving to this
day in the Laurenziana at Florence—not shelves, but desks for the richly-bound
and illuminated volumes, relics of the great minds of the past; from the walls
above, these great ones looked down facing one another with lively impressive-
ness! Raphael was familiar with such libraries; at Urbino the collection of
Duke Federigo was formed on the humanistic plans of Nicholas V, like most of the
book-collections of the Renaissance. There, above the intarsia bookcase, sat the
sages and poets of ancient and modern times, painted probably by Melozzo and
Justus van Gent in concert. Raphael’s father knew these apartments, and so
therefore did Raphael also. Dante’s portrait there (Plate 4) left an abiding
impression on him; it is the work of Justus, and for depth of character and
insight into the nature of the poet, it can be compared only with Rembrandt’s
Homer; here a Northerner showed understanding for the great Italian—it is
well known that we have here the first, but far from the last, evidence of the esteem
in which he was held on this side of the Alps. The Libreria of the Cathedral of
Siena had also been known to Raphael, since the time of his collaboration there,
with its beautiful ensemble of stands in wood, still preserved, and the decorated
antiphonals, and the frescoes by Pinturicchio above, with their effect of great
miniatures. Here were dominant on every side only those personages connected
with the one great friend of books, Enea Silvio, Pope Pius II.
In well kept-up Baroque libraries it is still customary for busts on the book-
cases to indicate who are the thinkers entombed, as it were, in the ancestral
vaults of the compartments. Here, in the rooms of the High Renaissance, in
72
another suite of saloons with paintings. He does not as a rule say to himself
that, in combination with this room, they have, in their position, some peculiar
significance, nor does he think of asking why here in particular this must be the
case. We shall need first to investigate again, and acknowledge anew, the
inward inevitableness of the art of the past; we shall have to reconstruct this
room as it was in Raphael’s time in compliance with the wishes of the Pope who
gave the commission, and we shall not penetrate to the vital nerve of these
pictures and hear the stimulating accents of their language until we know what
message they were meant to convey. Art in ancient interiors has always a
purpose; the form and purpose of the room were inseparably bound up together.
The lining with intarsia-work by Fra Giovanni da Verona on the dado
below is part of the original effect. From the shaded colours of the woodwork
in the ancient sacristy cupboards of Santa Maria in Organo, in Fra Giovanni’s
native city, we can still get an idea of what was lost, in warmth of tone and
the beautiful framework below Raphael’s paintings in this room, when the
coloured woodwork, fitted together with such ingenuity, was destroyed by the
bivouac fires of the Imperial soldiery in 1527. The present imitations and the
bronze-coloured pictures amongst simulated architecture, painted in chalky
fresco by Perino del Vaga, offer no substitute for the original warm harmony
with the wall-paintings. In front were stands with books, as surviving to this
day in the Laurenziana at Florence—not shelves, but desks for the richly-bound
and illuminated volumes, relics of the great minds of the past; from the walls
above, these great ones looked down facing one another with lively impressive-
ness! Raphael was familiar with such libraries; at Urbino the collection of
Duke Federigo was formed on the humanistic plans of Nicholas V, like most of the
book-collections of the Renaissance. There, above the intarsia bookcase, sat the
sages and poets of ancient and modern times, painted probably by Melozzo and
Justus van Gent in concert. Raphael’s father knew these apartments, and so
therefore did Raphael also. Dante’s portrait there (Plate 4) left an abiding
impression on him; it is the work of Justus, and for depth of character and
insight into the nature of the poet, it can be compared only with Rembrandt’s
Homer; here a Northerner showed understanding for the great Italian—it is
well known that we have here the first, but far from the last, evidence of the esteem
in which he was held on this side of the Alps. The Libreria of the Cathedral of
Siena had also been known to Raphael, since the time of his collaboration there,
with its beautiful ensemble of stands in wood, still preserved, and the decorated
antiphonals, and the frescoes by Pinturicchio above, with their effect of great
miniatures. Here were dominant on every side only those personages connected
with the one great friend of books, Enea Silvio, Pope Pius II.
In well kept-up Baroque libraries it is still customary for busts on the book-
cases to indicate who are the thinkers entombed, as it were, in the ancestral
vaults of the compartments. Here, in the rooms of the High Renaissance, in
72