DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0096
RAPHAEL
reverberating like music, with the figure of the mother rushing distraught into
the turmoil as centre; her face is set like a mask or a blossom at the focal point of
the scrollwork, like those of the frenzied men in the Battle of the Cascina. The
Massacre of the Innocents seems the best proof that in the Hoikham cartoon
or in the replica in the Palazzo Albani at Urbino we perhaps have, faithfully
handed down to us, the copy by Aristotile da Sangallo and thus the entire,
lost, old composition of Michael Angelo. Confronted by him, as by Leonardo,
Raphael masters the spirit, not the details, of monumental arrangement; there is
no other manner in which creative spirits can pay their respects to one another,
and how conscious of creative power the young painter must have been, who
had but just before composed, however laboriously, the ten interlocking figures
of the Emtombment, and who was now, through the papal commission, free, in
his new scene of operations, to make a beginning with the ceiling pictures! An
allegorical figure on clouds grew into a conception of Transfiguration that
dominated his life right up to the end; from the theme of the Judgment of
Solomon three pictorial compositions eradiated. The stream of his inventiveness
flowed in the same tempo as the wishes of such a patron (R. V, 229-235);
between this Pope and Raphael there was no obstacle.
Raphael had yet, it may be, to come to terms with himself, as painter. Here
on the ceiling the colours are still not appropriate to conveying expression. In the
Judgment of Solomon, it is true, the real mother stands out by her light,
whitish-grey colouring among other characteristics, but the Punishment of
Marsyas displays the same arbitrariness of colour as did, at an earlier date, the
Entombment; Theology, being restricted to the triple chord of her icono-
graphic colours, red, green and white, has a thoroughly discordant chromatic
effect owing to the blue tablets held by the putti (this is perhaps the fault of a
restoration in relatively recent times); as regards this blue, one is reminded
involuntarily of Maratta, but even apart from this, the colours are pleasing
only where, as in the Astronomy, they have become thin and pale, with grey
flesh-tones. Possibly this was Raphael’s intention—to keep the ceiling-pictures
keyed in light tones to the gold mosaic, more vague, as it were, in between the
rigid framework of the cassette’, in any case this effect failed of attainment, and
perhaps here the chromatic intentions were not yet operative which were to
control the wall-paintings below, in new or revived colour-expression.
§ Sequence of the Frescoes: Painting and Themes
Scientific research in its endeavour to be critical and its sense of devotion to
chronology has considered itself justified in asking which of the frescoes is the
earliest. As a rule the Disputa has been placed at the beginning of the series,
because of the similarity in disposition of the figures to the Trinity of San Severo.
But the School of Athens might with equal justification be connected, on
account of correspondences in figures and architecture, with the- Madonna del
78
reverberating like music, with the figure of the mother rushing distraught into
the turmoil as centre; her face is set like a mask or a blossom at the focal point of
the scrollwork, like those of the frenzied men in the Battle of the Cascina. The
Massacre of the Innocents seems the best proof that in the Hoikham cartoon
or in the replica in the Palazzo Albani at Urbino we perhaps have, faithfully
handed down to us, the copy by Aristotile da Sangallo and thus the entire,
lost, old composition of Michael Angelo. Confronted by him, as by Leonardo,
Raphael masters the spirit, not the details, of monumental arrangement; there is
no other manner in which creative spirits can pay their respects to one another,
and how conscious of creative power the young painter must have been, who
had but just before composed, however laboriously, the ten interlocking figures
of the Emtombment, and who was now, through the papal commission, free, in
his new scene of operations, to make a beginning with the ceiling pictures! An
allegorical figure on clouds grew into a conception of Transfiguration that
dominated his life right up to the end; from the theme of the Judgment of
Solomon three pictorial compositions eradiated. The stream of his inventiveness
flowed in the same tempo as the wishes of such a patron (R. V, 229-235);
between this Pope and Raphael there was no obstacle.
Raphael had yet, it may be, to come to terms with himself, as painter. Here
on the ceiling the colours are still not appropriate to conveying expression. In the
Judgment of Solomon, it is true, the real mother stands out by her light,
whitish-grey colouring among other characteristics, but the Punishment of
Marsyas displays the same arbitrariness of colour as did, at an earlier date, the
Entombment; Theology, being restricted to the triple chord of her icono-
graphic colours, red, green and white, has a thoroughly discordant chromatic
effect owing to the blue tablets held by the putti (this is perhaps the fault of a
restoration in relatively recent times); as regards this blue, one is reminded
involuntarily of Maratta, but even apart from this, the colours are pleasing
only where, as in the Astronomy, they have become thin and pale, with grey
flesh-tones. Possibly this was Raphael’s intention—to keep the ceiling-pictures
keyed in light tones to the gold mosaic, more vague, as it were, in between the
rigid framework of the cassette’, in any case this effect failed of attainment, and
perhaps here the chromatic intentions were not yet operative which were to
control the wall-paintings below, in new or revived colour-expression.
§ Sequence of the Frescoes: Painting and Themes
Scientific research in its endeavour to be critical and its sense of devotion to
chronology has considered itself justified in asking which of the frescoes is the
earliest. As a rule the Disputa has been placed at the beginning of the series,
because of the similarity in disposition of the figures to the Trinity of San Severo.
But the School of Athens might with equal justification be connected, on
account of correspondences in figures and architecture, with the- Madonna del
78