DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0171
RAPHAEL AS ARCHITECT
solely by the employment of these means in the manner that seems good to him
for his higher purpose.
The great “draughtsman” has become painter and architect in one. On the
paper for his studies the “hand” had to be transformed. The sheets of drawings for
the Chigi Chapel (Plates 162-164) are evidence of this new phase; in the passages
of sunlit shading in red chalk, with which up to that time he had hardly been so
familiar, he gives form, almost without contours, to the luminous foreshortenings;
in the rough surface of this crumbly material a medium offers itself for substantial-
ness in figure and gesture. The angel above the Jupiter (Oxford), expressing with
his uplifted arms the command “Hear, O world, the word of the Lord”, is washed
in, as it were, in loose strokes almost without contours. The first idea for the
figure of the Almighty is full of force, with the heavy pressure of the red chalk
on the paper. No better example will be found of the late style of the artist, in
which a peculiar majesty, as of the common people, is inherent: Goethe called
him at this period “the virile” Raphael.
This “virile” Raphael will scarcely be included in a history of painting. He
needs to be seen as the sum of his faculties, through all the obstacles that have
heaped themselves between him and us—time that has destroyed so much, the
one-sided worship of the divine son of Urbino as a young man, as religious
painter, as draughtsman divorced from colour, as an architect who deserted
painting. This man of the Renaissance, in his all-round perfection, would
have smiled at the complaint that he pursued aims that were alien to him, or
that he neglected the art of which he, as no one else, understood the practice.
§ Manifold Scenes of Activity
In all the scenes of his labours at that time—whether the architect’s office at
St Peter’s, with the soaring archivolts of the choir apses, the open halls of the
Loggie with vaults sweeping like a canopy or giving a deceptive foretaste of the
open air, the garden saloons of the Farnesina, the villa of Agostino Chigi,
where the ceiling seemed to perpetuate, under the sway of the gods, a festal
improvisation of arbours and awnings, or his studio in the Piazza Scossacavalli,
where the Transfiguration awaited its completion—everywhere his planning for
the totality was dominated by the desire to press forward from the material to
air and light, from the earthly to the beyond, from affliction to transfiguration.
It is this mature Raphael that we have to rediscover in his latest style. In the
presence of his creations nothing is more important than to come up against the
impelling purpose; for this guides us, through all digressions of research as to
the share taken by pupils, to what alone is genuine—his own power of invention.
§ Vatican Loggie (Plates 168, 169)
Raphael, as architect and painter, here in the Loggie of the Vatican conceived
a single whole: in him were united the power of the architect, the decorator, the
153
solely by the employment of these means in the manner that seems good to him
for his higher purpose.
The great “draughtsman” has become painter and architect in one. On the
paper for his studies the “hand” had to be transformed. The sheets of drawings for
the Chigi Chapel (Plates 162-164) are evidence of this new phase; in the passages
of sunlit shading in red chalk, with which up to that time he had hardly been so
familiar, he gives form, almost without contours, to the luminous foreshortenings;
in the rough surface of this crumbly material a medium offers itself for substantial-
ness in figure and gesture. The angel above the Jupiter (Oxford), expressing with
his uplifted arms the command “Hear, O world, the word of the Lord”, is washed
in, as it were, in loose strokes almost without contours. The first idea for the
figure of the Almighty is full of force, with the heavy pressure of the red chalk
on the paper. No better example will be found of the late style of the artist, in
which a peculiar majesty, as of the common people, is inherent: Goethe called
him at this period “the virile” Raphael.
This “virile” Raphael will scarcely be included in a history of painting. He
needs to be seen as the sum of his faculties, through all the obstacles that have
heaped themselves between him and us—time that has destroyed so much, the
one-sided worship of the divine son of Urbino as a young man, as religious
painter, as draughtsman divorced from colour, as an architect who deserted
painting. This man of the Renaissance, in his all-round perfection, would
have smiled at the complaint that he pursued aims that were alien to him, or
that he neglected the art of which he, as no one else, understood the practice.
§ Manifold Scenes of Activity
In all the scenes of his labours at that time—whether the architect’s office at
St Peter’s, with the soaring archivolts of the choir apses, the open halls of the
Loggie with vaults sweeping like a canopy or giving a deceptive foretaste of the
open air, the garden saloons of the Farnesina, the villa of Agostino Chigi,
where the ceiling seemed to perpetuate, under the sway of the gods, a festal
improvisation of arbours and awnings, or his studio in the Piazza Scossacavalli,
where the Transfiguration awaited its completion—everywhere his planning for
the totality was dominated by the desire to press forward from the material to
air and light, from the earthly to the beyond, from affliction to transfiguration.
It is this mature Raphael that we have to rediscover in his latest style. In the
presence of his creations nothing is more important than to come up against the
impelling purpose; for this guides us, through all digressions of research as to
the share taken by pupils, to what alone is genuine—his own power of invention.
§ Vatican Loggie (Plates 168, 169)
Raphael, as architect and painter, here in the Loggie of the Vatican conceived
a single whole: in him were united the power of the architect, the decorator, the
153