DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0133
ROMAN PORTRAITS
The unlucky star of the House of Medici seems also to have influenced
Raphael’s portraits of the last representative of the dynasty. We feel most acutely
the loss of the picture of the young Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino,
Michael Angelo’s “Penseroso”; for Raphael finished it in February, 1518,
that is, when his painting was at its zenith. All the portraits in the family series
go back to the single type which is perhaps best handed down in the great
replica in the corridor between the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. But here the
figure is out of keeping with the frame, and in the costume at the level of the
knees there are such serious voids that it may be questioned whether the original
by Raphael can have been composed in this manner. The statue of the Virgin,
after Michael Angelo’s figure in the Last Judgment, also speaks against the
view into the room; it must be an addition of the copyist. In any case, Raphael’s
arrangement can still be traced from the biretta, of which the spreading pyramid
is repeated in the collar of the gown and in the bulging sleeves, down as far as
the hips; the manner in which the collar clings to the slightly bowed neck is
one of those inventive touches which are denied to school-painters. Another
example at Colworth shows a more sensitive expression, but the figure is cramped
and ill-adjusted to the frame. The Junian look in these true Medici faces, to
which the beard especially imparts an element of fatalism, can now only be
conjectured; it may be that this eye, and the highly imposing ostentatiousness of
the figure, provided Raphael with a way of escape in his divided allegiance
between the hereditary Montefeltro-Rovere dynasty and the new one appointed
by his master the Pope; he immediately had to work for the new ruler of his
home country, and we know of a design for a coin with Lorenzo’s portrait which
was required and obtained from the artist. The expression of the young prince
handed down in the Colworth replica is sufficiently remarkable; Francis I
of France seems to have been present to his mind as the ideal of his aspirations
in bearing and expression, and his daughter Catherine was actually to ascend
the throne of the Valois. Is it perspicacity, or foresight, in the great historical
portrait-painter?
§ Castiglione: the Cortegiano
We learn, from the Count Castiglione in the Salon Carre of the Louvre
(Plate 120), the effect of a portrait fully worked out on a basis of personal experi-
ence by the fresco-painter of the Stanza of Heliodorus. The “formator del Corte-
giano”, as Ariosto calls him, had been known to Raphael since his Urbinoperiod,
from the days when he had to paint the St George, as patron of the Order
of the Garter (formerly in the Hermitage, now in the Mellon Collection) for
Castiglione’s embassy to England. We know of a correspondence between them
in which Raphael reciprocates the praises of the fastidious connoisseur with
intimate, profoundly significant professions concerning his creative activity.
They visited together the ancient ruins to which, with a poet’s subtle melancholy,
115
The unlucky star of the House of Medici seems also to have influenced
Raphael’s portraits of the last representative of the dynasty. We feel most acutely
the loss of the picture of the young Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino,
Michael Angelo’s “Penseroso”; for Raphael finished it in February, 1518,
that is, when his painting was at its zenith. All the portraits in the family series
go back to the single type which is perhaps best handed down in the great
replica in the corridor between the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. But here the
figure is out of keeping with the frame, and in the costume at the level of the
knees there are such serious voids that it may be questioned whether the original
by Raphael can have been composed in this manner. The statue of the Virgin,
after Michael Angelo’s figure in the Last Judgment, also speaks against the
view into the room; it must be an addition of the copyist. In any case, Raphael’s
arrangement can still be traced from the biretta, of which the spreading pyramid
is repeated in the collar of the gown and in the bulging sleeves, down as far as
the hips; the manner in which the collar clings to the slightly bowed neck is
one of those inventive touches which are denied to school-painters. Another
example at Colworth shows a more sensitive expression, but the figure is cramped
and ill-adjusted to the frame. The Junian look in these true Medici faces, to
which the beard especially imparts an element of fatalism, can now only be
conjectured; it may be that this eye, and the highly imposing ostentatiousness of
the figure, provided Raphael with a way of escape in his divided allegiance
between the hereditary Montefeltro-Rovere dynasty and the new one appointed
by his master the Pope; he immediately had to work for the new ruler of his
home country, and we know of a design for a coin with Lorenzo’s portrait which
was required and obtained from the artist. The expression of the young prince
handed down in the Colworth replica is sufficiently remarkable; Francis I
of France seems to have been present to his mind as the ideal of his aspirations
in bearing and expression, and his daughter Catherine was actually to ascend
the throne of the Valois. Is it perspicacity, or foresight, in the great historical
portrait-painter?
§ Castiglione: the Cortegiano
We learn, from the Count Castiglione in the Salon Carre of the Louvre
(Plate 120), the effect of a portrait fully worked out on a basis of personal experi-
ence by the fresco-painter of the Stanza of Heliodorus. The “formator del Corte-
giano”, as Ariosto calls him, had been known to Raphael since his Urbinoperiod,
from the days when he had to paint the St George, as patron of the Order
of the Garter (formerly in the Hermitage, now in the Mellon Collection) for
Castiglione’s embassy to England. We know of a correspondence between them
in which Raphael reciprocates the praises of the fastidious connoisseur with
intimate, profoundly significant professions concerning his creative activity.
They visited together the ancient ruins to which, with a poet’s subtle melancholy,
115