DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0178
RAPHAEL
♦
ambassador is reporting to the Duke that Raphael is, like most people of genius,
“malinconico”.
“Viel muss ein solcher Geist von solchen Gaben
Wenn er um Leichtsinn buhlt gelitten haben.”1
The humanistic magnanimo in Aristotle’s sense suffers much under the crazes,
peculiar to the period, of the intellectual elite amongst whom society has long
counted him, just as they reckon him as one of their own number. Without
losing his own creative self, he met this society with understanding; he shows
it in their portraits—as also in the ideal figures, the visions arising out of his
“idea”. Thus he was able, starting from the same means and in obedience to
the same central will, to become their spokesman as architect also.
§ Architectural Ideas in the Ceiling Paintings
In precisely the same manner as the backgrounds of his frescoes, the imagin-
ary columns and structures reared into the air, in the paintings of the Loggie
vaults, are enough in themselves to betray the fact that, at the height of his
career, Raphael had become the great architect so much in request among his
contemporaries that little time was left to him for painting.
With the exception of AGOSTINO CHIGI, all his patrons—from the King
of France and the Duke of Ferrara to the nuns of Sant’ Antonio, had to see
their hopes disappointed for pictures from his hand. The Ferrarese Ambassador,
perpetually spurred on by Alfonso I, was obliged on account of a commission
remaining for years unexecuted to pester the master, who knew how to evade
him with elegant courtesy, and in his report to the Duke regarding the fruitless-
ness of his reminders, dated 17th September, 1519, he writes: “I met Raphael
on the site for St Peter’s—-fa il Bramante—he is playing the part ofBramante.”
He was playing no part, he was profoundly in earnest; it was indeed a
matter of the deepest inward compulsion! He felt the office of architect to St
Peter’s to be the height of good fortune. Posterity has regretted that his time
for painting was thereby curtailed—in the same way we are less grateful to
Goethe for his Farbenlehre than for his poems. In taking this attitude we forget
that the finest work of art speaks to us in the fulfilment of a personality, and
that it contains within itself the faculty for richer creations.
§ Architect as Spokesman of his Age
Painting was not always, among the visual arts, the language most easily
understood by the generality of people, as it became later. Architecture has
often presented itself as the mirror and expression of all the strongest forces of
the age; it is so, really—in a more or less adulatory manner—even to the present
1 “A mind thus gifted needs must suffer much
When in frivolity ’tis called to vie.”
160
♦
ambassador is reporting to the Duke that Raphael is, like most people of genius,
“malinconico”.
“Viel muss ein solcher Geist von solchen Gaben
Wenn er um Leichtsinn buhlt gelitten haben.”1
The humanistic magnanimo in Aristotle’s sense suffers much under the crazes,
peculiar to the period, of the intellectual elite amongst whom society has long
counted him, just as they reckon him as one of their own number. Without
losing his own creative self, he met this society with understanding; he shows
it in their portraits—as also in the ideal figures, the visions arising out of his
“idea”. Thus he was able, starting from the same means and in obedience to
the same central will, to become their spokesman as architect also.
§ Architectural Ideas in the Ceiling Paintings
In precisely the same manner as the backgrounds of his frescoes, the imagin-
ary columns and structures reared into the air, in the paintings of the Loggie
vaults, are enough in themselves to betray the fact that, at the height of his
career, Raphael had become the great architect so much in request among his
contemporaries that little time was left to him for painting.
With the exception of AGOSTINO CHIGI, all his patrons—from the King
of France and the Duke of Ferrara to the nuns of Sant’ Antonio, had to see
their hopes disappointed for pictures from his hand. The Ferrarese Ambassador,
perpetually spurred on by Alfonso I, was obliged on account of a commission
remaining for years unexecuted to pester the master, who knew how to evade
him with elegant courtesy, and in his report to the Duke regarding the fruitless-
ness of his reminders, dated 17th September, 1519, he writes: “I met Raphael
on the site for St Peter’s—-fa il Bramante—he is playing the part ofBramante.”
He was playing no part, he was profoundly in earnest; it was indeed a
matter of the deepest inward compulsion! He felt the office of architect to St
Peter’s to be the height of good fortune. Posterity has regretted that his time
for painting was thereby curtailed—in the same way we are less grateful to
Goethe for his Farbenlehre than for his poems. In taking this attitude we forget
that the finest work of art speaks to us in the fulfilment of a personality, and
that it contains within itself the faculty for richer creations.
§ Architect as Spokesman of his Age
Painting was not always, among the visual arts, the language most easily
understood by the generality of people, as it became later. Architecture has
often presented itself as the mirror and expression of all the strongest forces of
the age; it is so, really—in a more or less adulatory manner—even to the present
1 “A mind thus gifted needs must suffer much
When in frivolity ’tis called to vie.”
160