DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0196
RAPHAEL
of the figure stand out before sea, mountains and clouds, with flights of birds
hovering round about, whilst the shell beneath her feet seems to communicate
to the goddess the sense of swaying on the waves. The frame tells us that a
picture was to be made out of this sketch. In any case, in his early Roman
days, the painter of the Madonnas and the Disputa was busy with an Antique
pictorial idea, at the same time as with these dishes. Form and gesture gain
nobility in the unaccustomed Roman atmosphere; impressions derived from
the Antique are mastered and brought into play in a new, individual style.
With Peruzzi, in the garden saloon of the Farnesina, the same motive was
frittered away in pedantry. Only Raphael is able to repay his debt of gratitude
to the Antique on terms of free equality.
§ Chigi Chapel: Sibyls
Even before Chigi had had erected for him the mortuary chapel near the
monastery of his patron saint in Santa Maria del Popolo, he seems to have had
in mind another spot to remind him of death, the first chapel on the right in
Santa Maria della Pace, with Raphael’s Prophets and Sibyls. We do not know
how the niche was once adorned, before the Baroque rebuilding, or whether it
ever provided a place for a tomb. In connection with an old restoration in the
seventeenth century there is talk of a fresco above the altar; perhaps it contained
a Pietd. The inscription on the scrolls and tablets above could refer to the dead
Redeemer. There would then be nothing contradictory about the circumstance
that, whilst here, in Santa Maria della Pace, the idea of death and resurrection
is dominant, the burial-place was already under construction at Santa Maria del
Popolo, the favourite church of the Rovere family, whose arms were borne by
Chigi, and near the monastery of St Augustine, his patron.
§ Damaging Restoration: Original Architectural Background
' This frescoed wall has been under the sway of an unlucky star (Plates 194c, 196-
203); the master was obliged to leave the grandly conceived upper part with the
Prophets to be carried out by others after his design. As regards the Sibyls, their har-
mony has certainly always been admired, but the composition has not come down
to us as it was conceived. Arbitrary restorershave had their way with it, first in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then in the nineteenth, when Palmiroli
proclaimed to the world his belief that he was the right person to renovate the
Sistine Madonna. Whether before his time, and if so when, the Sibyls lost
their architectural background and were provided with the utterly unspatial
curtain before which their movements, springing as it were like flowers from
the ground, appear as if on front stage between the acts, we do not know.
On the occasion of a restoration in 1618, that is to say already a hundred years
after they came into existence, there is still mention of the sky. Agostino Chigi
178
of the figure stand out before sea, mountains and clouds, with flights of birds
hovering round about, whilst the shell beneath her feet seems to communicate
to the goddess the sense of swaying on the waves. The frame tells us that a
picture was to be made out of this sketch. In any case, in his early Roman
days, the painter of the Madonnas and the Disputa was busy with an Antique
pictorial idea, at the same time as with these dishes. Form and gesture gain
nobility in the unaccustomed Roman atmosphere; impressions derived from
the Antique are mastered and brought into play in a new, individual style.
With Peruzzi, in the garden saloon of the Farnesina, the same motive was
frittered away in pedantry. Only Raphael is able to repay his debt of gratitude
to the Antique on terms of free equality.
§ Chigi Chapel: Sibyls
Even before Chigi had had erected for him the mortuary chapel near the
monastery of his patron saint in Santa Maria del Popolo, he seems to have had
in mind another spot to remind him of death, the first chapel on the right in
Santa Maria della Pace, with Raphael’s Prophets and Sibyls. We do not know
how the niche was once adorned, before the Baroque rebuilding, or whether it
ever provided a place for a tomb. In connection with an old restoration in the
seventeenth century there is talk of a fresco above the altar; perhaps it contained
a Pietd. The inscription on the scrolls and tablets above could refer to the dead
Redeemer. There would then be nothing contradictory about the circumstance
that, whilst here, in Santa Maria della Pace, the idea of death and resurrection
is dominant, the burial-place was already under construction at Santa Maria del
Popolo, the favourite church of the Rovere family, whose arms were borne by
Chigi, and near the monastery of St Augustine, his patron.
§ Damaging Restoration: Original Architectural Background
' This frescoed wall has been under the sway of an unlucky star (Plates 194c, 196-
203); the master was obliged to leave the grandly conceived upper part with the
Prophets to be carried out by others after his design. As regards the Sibyls, their har-
mony has certainly always been admired, but the composition has not come down
to us as it was conceived. Arbitrary restorershave had their way with it, first in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then in the nineteenth, when Palmiroli
proclaimed to the world his belief that he was the right person to renovate the
Sistine Madonna. Whether before his time, and if so when, the Sibyls lost
their architectural background and were provided with the utterly unspatial
curtain before which their movements, springing as it were like flowers from
the ground, appear as if on front stage between the acts, we do not know.
On the occasion of a restoration in 1618, that is to say already a hundred years
after they came into existence, there is still mention of the sky. Agostino Chigi
178