DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0118
RAPHAEL
is to be seen; the fresco colours have decayed, even the drawing has suffered.
But the principal consideration is, what still remains effective. Here it is as
with a good actor—his body is all mime, and Raphael knows only actors of
this quality, like this patriarch Noah and this motherly woman, who has
enough to bear, and now has to bestir herself with bringing out of the Ark her
self-willed second boy, who will stay behind amongst the animals. In the
Offering of Abraham there is, about father and son, something of the great-
ness of the Laocoon; the angels sweep down out of the beyond—one of them
as if it were a case of holding up a bolting horse; the other swoops to earth with
the ram, in an airy contraposto which is quite new in its audacity. The sketches
for the Assumption gave opportunity of testing such ideas as these; they are
echoed again and again—in the Sibyls and in the completion of the Madonna
del Baldacchino’, the complementary rhythms of the angels on the wings of
the wind, in the Burning Bush (Plate ioi), with their ethereally convulsive
movements, also took shape for the first time in these drawings.
The prototype of the sleeping Jacob at the foot of the Ladder to Heaven
might perhaps be looked for among Michael Angelo’s Ancestors of Christ, but
in vain; it is rather the style of the Pope that was here the common element.
§ Condition of the Frescoes: Original Colouring
Unfavourable criticisms could not be made independently of the bad state of
preservation of these frescoes. The surface has parted in exactly the same
manner as the wall with the Justice in the First Stanza. It may be that in
both cases a new composition of the lime coating was tried which proved
disastrous to the pictures, at least to the shadows. In addition to this there is
the hideous blue ground that a restorer at some time or other has painted
round the figures, venturing in so doing to impinge on Raphael’s contours—a
veritable crimen laesae majestatis. The effect here intended was that of fabrics
hung like velaria, here allowing the vaulting to be easily seen. This is shown
even by the choice of colours; in the Burning Bush, violet-grey, olive, and reseda-
colour heightened with gold stood out, against the original soft ultramarine of
the background, on the draperies of the Almighty and Moses, on the wings
of the angels, and the ground. In the Offering of Isaac the shadows on the
figures are of a golden hue, the garments and the flames on the altar are gold-
orange, the wings reddish-gold, the ram yellowish-gold; there are also violet
and reddish grey and matt blue in the draperies. These colours of course
harmonised with the old, soft ultramarine, though they do not with the new
blue.
In the picture of the Almighty appearing to Noah the old colour-values
can still be recognised, in spite of the fading of the shadows; the ark, in golden
ochre-yellow, is a magnificent foil for the violet, grey-green and matt blue of
the figures.
100
is to be seen; the fresco colours have decayed, even the drawing has suffered.
But the principal consideration is, what still remains effective. Here it is as
with a good actor—his body is all mime, and Raphael knows only actors of
this quality, like this patriarch Noah and this motherly woman, who has
enough to bear, and now has to bestir herself with bringing out of the Ark her
self-willed second boy, who will stay behind amongst the animals. In the
Offering of Abraham there is, about father and son, something of the great-
ness of the Laocoon; the angels sweep down out of the beyond—one of them
as if it were a case of holding up a bolting horse; the other swoops to earth with
the ram, in an airy contraposto which is quite new in its audacity. The sketches
for the Assumption gave opportunity of testing such ideas as these; they are
echoed again and again—in the Sibyls and in the completion of the Madonna
del Baldacchino’, the complementary rhythms of the angels on the wings of
the wind, in the Burning Bush (Plate ioi), with their ethereally convulsive
movements, also took shape for the first time in these drawings.
The prototype of the sleeping Jacob at the foot of the Ladder to Heaven
might perhaps be looked for among Michael Angelo’s Ancestors of Christ, but
in vain; it is rather the style of the Pope that was here the common element.
§ Condition of the Frescoes: Original Colouring
Unfavourable criticisms could not be made independently of the bad state of
preservation of these frescoes. The surface has parted in exactly the same
manner as the wall with the Justice in the First Stanza. It may be that in
both cases a new composition of the lime coating was tried which proved
disastrous to the pictures, at least to the shadows. In addition to this there is
the hideous blue ground that a restorer at some time or other has painted
round the figures, venturing in so doing to impinge on Raphael’s contours—a
veritable crimen laesae majestatis. The effect here intended was that of fabrics
hung like velaria, here allowing the vaulting to be easily seen. This is shown
even by the choice of colours; in the Burning Bush, violet-grey, olive, and reseda-
colour heightened with gold stood out, against the original soft ultramarine of
the background, on the draperies of the Almighty and Moses, on the wings
of the angels, and the ground. In the Offering of Isaac the shadows on the
figures are of a golden hue, the garments and the flames on the altar are gold-
orange, the wings reddish-gold, the ram yellowish-gold; there are also violet
and reddish grey and matt blue in the draperies. These colours of course
harmonised with the old, soft ultramarine, though they do not with the new
blue.
In the picture of the Almighty appearing to Noah the old colour-values
can still be recognised, in spite of the fading of the shadows; the ark, in golden
ochre-yellow, is a magnificent foil for the violet, grey-green and matt blue of
the figures.
100