DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0180
RAPHAEL
For undoubtedly an artist who understood how to create in building the
form and expression for every mood, for every life’s desire, for each fluctuation
between display and relaxation, even for persons of all states of affluence and
for every situation, felt himself to have a mandate from the society amongst
which he could count himself.
§ Suburban Palazzo Pandolfini: Changing Mood in Fagade and
Garden Front
The Prelate Giannozzo Pandolfini (Plate 176), one of the trusted fellow-
countrymen of Leo X, required a house near the Casino Mediceo in the garden
suburb. The fine distinction made, or at least stressed, in England between a
palace and “house” seems here to have taken shape. The design of Raphael pro-
vides for both—exclusiveness and intimacy in a delightful blend, two stretches of
different height on the Via San Gallo, the mean between an official residence (one
might say between a palazzo} and a country house. The higher, two-storey
building shows pronounced cornices on both floors, and on the surface as back-
ground there is a plastic alternation of the angular and curved pediments of
the aediculae round the windows, with a plastic effect by turns sharp and gentle;
rustication at the angles gives to the building the aloofness of a distinguished
bearing. In order to enjoy this transition from the urban to the suburban, this
fagade must be seen in its entire extent together with the roadway space, which
miraculously enough has been preserved to the present day: earlier views of it
possessing some feeling for a single whole give this even better than the realistic
modern illustrations. Architecture does not come into being until there is this
harmonisation of building and setting; if this is lacking, we have humourless
class-work from a technical school, and strange as it may sound, it is precisely
humour that here plays its part, in many different veins. The haughty aloofness
on the outside is given up in the interior, and on the garden front (Plate 177) there
is a gentle flow of planes and lines that invites one to relaxation—a deliberate
change of tone which surely belongs to Raphael and is his authentic invention,
even if Giuliano da San Gallo carried out the construction and brought it to
completion only after Raphael’s death.
§ The former Palazzo Antonio da Brescia
An acute-angled corner in the Borgo was assigned by the Pope as a building-
site to Jacopo Antonio da Brescia, Leo’s Surgeon in Ordinary, together perhaps
with a subsidy for the costs of building. The plot of ground had belonged to
San Gallo. On this site was erected a small palace, full of dignity (Plate 178), in the
Via Alessandria, now the Borgo Nuovo, where the Borgo Sant’ Angelo opens
obliquely into it, composed after Raphael’s plan at the sharp-angled junction
of the two streets. Its proportions on the narrow site are slender; it shows a
162
For undoubtedly an artist who understood how to create in building the
form and expression for every mood, for every life’s desire, for each fluctuation
between display and relaxation, even for persons of all states of affluence and
for every situation, felt himself to have a mandate from the society amongst
which he could count himself.
§ Suburban Palazzo Pandolfini: Changing Mood in Fagade and
Garden Front
The Prelate Giannozzo Pandolfini (Plate 176), one of the trusted fellow-
countrymen of Leo X, required a house near the Casino Mediceo in the garden
suburb. The fine distinction made, or at least stressed, in England between a
palace and “house” seems here to have taken shape. The design of Raphael pro-
vides for both—exclusiveness and intimacy in a delightful blend, two stretches of
different height on the Via San Gallo, the mean between an official residence (one
might say between a palazzo} and a country house. The higher, two-storey
building shows pronounced cornices on both floors, and on the surface as back-
ground there is a plastic alternation of the angular and curved pediments of
the aediculae round the windows, with a plastic effect by turns sharp and gentle;
rustication at the angles gives to the building the aloofness of a distinguished
bearing. In order to enjoy this transition from the urban to the suburban, this
fagade must be seen in its entire extent together with the roadway space, which
miraculously enough has been preserved to the present day: earlier views of it
possessing some feeling for a single whole give this even better than the realistic
modern illustrations. Architecture does not come into being until there is this
harmonisation of building and setting; if this is lacking, we have humourless
class-work from a technical school, and strange as it may sound, it is precisely
humour that here plays its part, in many different veins. The haughty aloofness
on the outside is given up in the interior, and on the garden front (Plate 177) there
is a gentle flow of planes and lines that invites one to relaxation—a deliberate
change of tone which surely belongs to Raphael and is his authentic invention,
even if Giuliano da San Gallo carried out the construction and brought it to
completion only after Raphael’s death.
§ The former Palazzo Antonio da Brescia
An acute-angled corner in the Borgo was assigned by the Pope as a building-
site to Jacopo Antonio da Brescia, Leo’s Surgeon in Ordinary, together perhaps
with a subsidy for the costs of building. The plot of ground had belonged to
San Gallo. On this site was erected a small palace, full of dignity (Plate 178), in the
Via Alessandria, now the Borgo Nuovo, where the Borgo Sant’ Angelo opens
obliquely into it, composed after Raphael’s plan at the sharp-angled junction
of the two streets. Its proportions on the narrow site are slender; it shows a
162