DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0097
ROME
Baldacchino. Even where art is concerned, there is a tendency to think in the
categories of mediocre research; but those who suppose that one work of art can
be traced back to another, are apt to forget that jumping over intervals is a
sign of artistic, as of other kinds of genius. Not even in rational, scientific
literature, does a book come into existence without the chapters being taken
into consideration simultaneously.
In this case there was such simultaneity: the pictures are the occasion and
the complement one of another. Now and then an idea that has been worked
up in advance has been transferred to another wall, from the Parnassus to the
School of Athens, or from the Disputa to the Justitia.
In the First Stanza, when it fell to Raphael to interpret the content of the
knowledge and consciousness of his time, it was a case, as it were, of a symphony
in four movements which must sound as a single whole. They had therefore
to be attuned to one another. This is where the painter came into play; and
now he threw himself into his themes as he had shown himself capable of doing
in the portraits at Florence It is marvellous how clearly he succeeded every
time, in all four cases, in seizing the fundamental chord: radiance and other-
wordly light, as of a transfiguration, for the Disputa^ the grave, sublime,
human task of Philosophy, in the tones of grey of the School of Athens;
the soft, rarified air of the heights on Parnassus; the clarity of the judicial
virtues above the flaunting red and gold of the robes and vestments on the walls
of the Justice
Certainly it is not easy to-day to discover how to get at the pictorial quality,
the peculiar chromatic language, of these frescoes; they have faded into the
plaster. The ultramarine has coagulated and lost its limpidity, forming great
disturbing patches, massive islands in the floating transparency of the remaining
colours. Pious copyists have destroyed the lower parts that are within reach,
by using oil-paper in the process of tracing. Added to this, there has been that
plague of recent centuries, the host of restorers. Carlo Maratta may have
contributed greatly with his vino greco and his thoroughly ordinary blue to
the dissolution of the original colour-harmonies.
§ Pictorial Designs
There is only one way of knowing Raphael’s original intentions, that is,
from his designs! But are these drawings genuine? Scarcely a single sheet has
gone unquestioned in the period of criticism since Lermolieff. The great collectors
of former days, true amateurs, believed in them, for they competed for
them as artists, or as laymen with an artistic training, and themselves still worked
more or less in the traditional craftsman’s style of the old Accademia, like the
great masters with their workshop; and they found these sheets of drawings
desirable possessions because they seemed to them indescribably precious as
examples to be imitated; they based upon them their conception of Raphael as
79
Baldacchino. Even where art is concerned, there is a tendency to think in the
categories of mediocre research; but those who suppose that one work of art can
be traced back to another, are apt to forget that jumping over intervals is a
sign of artistic, as of other kinds of genius. Not even in rational, scientific
literature, does a book come into existence without the chapters being taken
into consideration simultaneously.
In this case there was such simultaneity: the pictures are the occasion and
the complement one of another. Now and then an idea that has been worked
up in advance has been transferred to another wall, from the Parnassus to the
School of Athens, or from the Disputa to the Justitia.
In the First Stanza, when it fell to Raphael to interpret the content of the
knowledge and consciousness of his time, it was a case, as it were, of a symphony
in four movements which must sound as a single whole. They had therefore
to be attuned to one another. This is where the painter came into play; and
now he threw himself into his themes as he had shown himself capable of doing
in the portraits at Florence It is marvellous how clearly he succeeded every
time, in all four cases, in seizing the fundamental chord: radiance and other-
wordly light, as of a transfiguration, for the Disputa^ the grave, sublime,
human task of Philosophy, in the tones of grey of the School of Athens;
the soft, rarified air of the heights on Parnassus; the clarity of the judicial
virtues above the flaunting red and gold of the robes and vestments on the walls
of the Justice
Certainly it is not easy to-day to discover how to get at the pictorial quality,
the peculiar chromatic language, of these frescoes; they have faded into the
plaster. The ultramarine has coagulated and lost its limpidity, forming great
disturbing patches, massive islands in the floating transparency of the remaining
colours. Pious copyists have destroyed the lower parts that are within reach,
by using oil-paper in the process of tracing. Added to this, there has been that
plague of recent centuries, the host of restorers. Carlo Maratta may have
contributed greatly with his vino greco and his thoroughly ordinary blue to
the dissolution of the original colour-harmonies.
§ Pictorial Designs
There is only one way of knowing Raphael’s original intentions, that is,
from his designs! But are these drawings genuine? Scarcely a single sheet has
gone unquestioned in the period of criticism since Lermolieff. The great collectors
of former days, true amateurs, believed in them, for they competed for
them as artists, or as laymen with an artistic training, and themselves still worked
more or less in the traditional craftsman’s style of the old Accademia, like the
great masters with their workshop; and they found these sheets of drawings
desirable possessions because they seemed to them indescribably precious as
examples to be imitated; they based upon them their conception of Raphael as
79