DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0098
RAPHAEL
the great inventor. More recent criticism, with the irreverence of the age of
Impressionism, applied as a criterion a notion alien to Raphael or even to art
as a whole; works of art must be criticised, classified, dated and commented
on, instead of being allowed to speak for themselves—this was its only creed.
Art history as a Last Judgment! And in this judgment were classed among the
damned all the precious sketches of Raphael for his compositions, especially
the drawings for the Disputa- Since Lermolieff’s time those of them that are
washed with bistre have been attributed to Perino del Vaga, the more delicate
chalk drawings to Penni or the school of Michael Angelo. It did not occur to
anyone, when these sketches were under discussion, to enquire into their inven-
tion, or their wonderful poetic ideas. They make possible an infinitely more
profound conception of Raphael as a poet; and since poetry and colour are in
him inseparable, they afford an entirely new idea of him as a painter. It was
worth while to enter the lists against the clever Lermolieff and his over-clever
followers in defence of Raphael as an artist of deep sensibility and rich inventive-
ness. In so doing, one could feel oneself to be in the good company of the
greatest connoisseurs, from Jabach, Mariette and Richardson, from Reynolds
and Lawrence to Leon Bonnat and J. C. Robinson.
§ Disputa (Plates 62, 63)
The Riconquista has resulted in the assembly of forty-five drawings for the
Disputa alone; half of them at least had really to be won back again.
Thus we have well-nigh half a hundred studies for one and the same picture;
this must be considered a unique case in the history of art, and yet we may feel
convinced that there were once four or even five times as many, and whole
portfolios with designs belonging together must have perished. But in any case,
we have enough to allow us to follow the development of the ideas in this fresco,
from the first pictorial conceptions to their execution in unison with the archi-
tecture; the great pattern, of such high significance in its fixed framework, grew
out of a painter’s musings over phenomena of light, but the way was a long one.
“Pinxit Raphael in Vaticano cubicula duo ad Praescriptum Julii pontificis”
—Raphael painted two rooms in the Vatican after the prescriptions of Pope
Julius, says Giovio. . . . Here it was a matter of embracing the most compre-
hensive ecclesiastical and liturgical themes; in those days the abstract in corporeal
shape never appeared so strange as to modern times. For this there existed, in
Central Italy as in the North, on both sides of the Alps, a rigid tradition; the
Spanish Chapel, the ancient chapterhouse of the Dominican monastery of
Santa Maria Novella, like the Ghent altarpiece and Diirer’s Allerheili-
genbild (“Adoration of the Trinity”) provided for the devout without
trouble a picture of the Ecclesia triumphans in a dogmatic pictorial homily—the
Ghent altarpiece in the lovely mingling of ritual dignity with an animation of
earthly vivacity.
80
the great inventor. More recent criticism, with the irreverence of the age of
Impressionism, applied as a criterion a notion alien to Raphael or even to art
as a whole; works of art must be criticised, classified, dated and commented
on, instead of being allowed to speak for themselves—this was its only creed.
Art history as a Last Judgment! And in this judgment were classed among the
damned all the precious sketches of Raphael for his compositions, especially
the drawings for the Disputa- Since Lermolieff’s time those of them that are
washed with bistre have been attributed to Perino del Vaga, the more delicate
chalk drawings to Penni or the school of Michael Angelo. It did not occur to
anyone, when these sketches were under discussion, to enquire into their inven-
tion, or their wonderful poetic ideas. They make possible an infinitely more
profound conception of Raphael as a poet; and since poetry and colour are in
him inseparable, they afford an entirely new idea of him as a painter. It was
worth while to enter the lists against the clever Lermolieff and his over-clever
followers in defence of Raphael as an artist of deep sensibility and rich inventive-
ness. In so doing, one could feel oneself to be in the good company of the
greatest connoisseurs, from Jabach, Mariette and Richardson, from Reynolds
and Lawrence to Leon Bonnat and J. C. Robinson.
§ Disputa (Plates 62, 63)
The Riconquista has resulted in the assembly of forty-five drawings for the
Disputa alone; half of them at least had really to be won back again.
Thus we have well-nigh half a hundred studies for one and the same picture;
this must be considered a unique case in the history of art, and yet we may feel
convinced that there were once four or even five times as many, and whole
portfolios with designs belonging together must have perished. But in any case,
we have enough to allow us to follow the development of the ideas in this fresco,
from the first pictorial conceptions to their execution in unison with the archi-
tecture; the great pattern, of such high significance in its fixed framework, grew
out of a painter’s musings over phenomena of light, but the way was a long one.
“Pinxit Raphael in Vaticano cubicula duo ad Praescriptum Julii pontificis”
—Raphael painted two rooms in the Vatican after the prescriptions of Pope
Julius, says Giovio. . . . Here it was a matter of embracing the most compre-
hensive ecclesiastical and liturgical themes; in those days the abstract in corporeal
shape never appeared so strange as to modern times. For this there existed, in
Central Italy as in the North, on both sides of the Alps, a rigid tradition; the
Spanish Chapel, the ancient chapterhouse of the Dominican monastery of
Santa Maria Novella, like the Ghent altarpiece and Diirer’s Allerheili-
genbild (“Adoration of the Trinity”) provided for the devout without
trouble a picture of the Ecclesia triumphans in a dogmatic pictorial homily—the
Ghent altarpiece in the lovely mingling of ritual dignity with an animation of
earthly vivacity.
80