DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0162
RAPHAEL
making the stone as a product of art to return again to the soil, by discovering
the harmony between structure and site, and by creating this pantheistic accord of
columns and landscape. This temple anticipates the note of Palladio’s Villa
Rotonda on the Monte Berico near Vicenza.
§ At Florence, Intercourse with Architects: Enthusiasm for Vitruvius
It cannot have been otherwise: in Florence, intercourse with the architects
CRONACA, ANTONIO and GIULIANO DA SANGALLO in the house of
BACCIO D’AGNOLO must have had the same importance for Raphael’s world
of architectural forms that the spectacle of the figures then being magnificently re-
vived on the banks of Arno had in painting and sculpture. His interest was certainly
aroused by the enquiry into the new proportion in relation also to architecture
and the more exact knowledge of the theories of Vitruvius. The discussion raged
like a conspiracy through Venice, Urbino, Perugia, Florence and Rome; it is
impossible that the subject would not be touched upon in those “dispute d’im-
portanza” among so many who were concerned with building and were investi-
gating style; nor could anyone fail to hear it spoken of who already, in his early
years, had been in contact with the spheres of Francesco di Giorgio and Piero
della Francesca. He assimilated with eagerness all that had materialised in
Florence on the basis of such doctrines. When the Dei family commissioned him
to paint an altarpiece for Santo Spirito, the apse in which the Madonna’s
throne stands beneath the baldacchino became a tribute to the great builder of
this Renaissance basilica, Brunelleschi, whose proud austerity was to be the
environment of Raphael’s picture. The great reviver of “buona architettura”
had discovered in Rome, from among the ruins, his rules for a stately archi-
tecture, and had brought them to life in Florence. Now with Raphael they
return again to Rome.
§ Architecture in Frescoes
There BRAMANTE, born like him in the Duchy of Urbino, awaited him.
He will have brought to Bramante a new wave of inspiration from his birth-
place. Laurana and the Antique traditions handed down from Istria and
Dalmatia must have been revived anew. All this contributed to the pulsing
life of which he was witness in the Vatican; he was soon to take a part in it,
indeed to become its driving force. When the ideal setting had to be created for
the School of Athens (Plate 72), in which the sublime spirits, the Titans of Anti-
quity, had their existence, Raphael was certainly not unaffected by the aspirations
of the age, which Bramante was about to embody in symbolical form in the dome
of San Pietro. Their thinking, their speech, the rhythm of their footsteps even,
—in a word, their sense of sublimity, needed the noble members of such walls
as a background for their utterances, the high-vaulted ceiling to re-echo them.
Such a conception, in its harmony with the mood of these figures, could
144
making the stone as a product of art to return again to the soil, by discovering
the harmony between structure and site, and by creating this pantheistic accord of
columns and landscape. This temple anticipates the note of Palladio’s Villa
Rotonda on the Monte Berico near Vicenza.
§ At Florence, Intercourse with Architects: Enthusiasm for Vitruvius
It cannot have been otherwise: in Florence, intercourse with the architects
CRONACA, ANTONIO and GIULIANO DA SANGALLO in the house of
BACCIO D’AGNOLO must have had the same importance for Raphael’s world
of architectural forms that the spectacle of the figures then being magnificently re-
vived on the banks of Arno had in painting and sculpture. His interest was certainly
aroused by the enquiry into the new proportion in relation also to architecture
and the more exact knowledge of the theories of Vitruvius. The discussion raged
like a conspiracy through Venice, Urbino, Perugia, Florence and Rome; it is
impossible that the subject would not be touched upon in those “dispute d’im-
portanza” among so many who were concerned with building and were investi-
gating style; nor could anyone fail to hear it spoken of who already, in his early
years, had been in contact with the spheres of Francesco di Giorgio and Piero
della Francesca. He assimilated with eagerness all that had materialised in
Florence on the basis of such doctrines. When the Dei family commissioned him
to paint an altarpiece for Santo Spirito, the apse in which the Madonna’s
throne stands beneath the baldacchino became a tribute to the great builder of
this Renaissance basilica, Brunelleschi, whose proud austerity was to be the
environment of Raphael’s picture. The great reviver of “buona architettura”
had discovered in Rome, from among the ruins, his rules for a stately archi-
tecture, and had brought them to life in Florence. Now with Raphael they
return again to Rome.
§ Architecture in Frescoes
There BRAMANTE, born like him in the Duchy of Urbino, awaited him.
He will have brought to Bramante a new wave of inspiration from his birth-
place. Laurana and the Antique traditions handed down from Istria and
Dalmatia must have been revived anew. All this contributed to the pulsing
life of which he was witness in the Vatican; he was soon to take a part in it,
indeed to become its driving force. When the ideal setting had to be created for
the School of Athens (Plate 72), in which the sublime spirits, the Titans of Anti-
quity, had their existence, Raphael was certainly not unaffected by the aspirations
of the age, which Bramante was about to embody in symbolical form in the dome
of San Pietro. Their thinking, their speech, the rhythm of their footsteps even,
—in a word, their sense of sublimity, needed the noble members of such walls
as a background for their utterances, the high-vaulted ceiling to re-echo them.
Such a conception, in its harmony with the mood of these figures, could
144