DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0197
RAPHAEL AND AGOSTINO GHIGI
the younger, who founded the fortune of Fabio Chigi (later, Pope Alexander III),
writes in his Commentarii:1 “Under the eyes of Giovanni Lanfranco and the
Cavalier d’Arpino they have begun to clean the fresco with a little moist farm-
house bread and a touch of white-of-egg to liven up the colours, and to make
up certain unimportant parts such as draperies and sky.” At that time the
most beautiful of the Sibyls was already seriously damaged by tracing with oil-
paper. They moved therefore against a background at least as deep in tone as
that retained by the Prophets; perhaps the vistas were more open than in the
upper part. At all events one can recognise, from lines scratched in the green
curtain, that the architecture, of which remnants can be made out on the right
at the head of the angel surging forward above the aged Tiburtina, must have
extended into a hall; only so could the movements of the figures have had any
sense, from the putto with the torch (Plate 195) to the angels, who require for the
beating of their wings as they sweep above the earth more atmosphere than is
afforded between the green curtain-hanging and the cornice beneath the
feet of the Sibyls.
For in Raphael a background is not a foil for the figures; he can entirely
dispense with it, as is shown by his Madonna della Sedia and Madonna della
Tend a. But otherwise the space repeats the rhythm of the movements; the
Alba Madonna is not merely composed in the round—she is also encircled by
the landscape in a wide sweep. Thus the attitudes of the earthly prophetesses
and heavenly messengers are also unthinkable except against a receding back-
ground. The aesthetics of our classicism took a delight in this design, which had
taken on a flavour of style Empire with its flat ground—but Raphael’s horror vacui
would never have tolerated such lifeless surfaces above the figures; they were
pervaded by architectural members of which the lines can still be recognised,
and the perpendicular setting of their pillars provided the animated forms
with a kind of framing. An angular niche of which the cornice and
hollow passed behind the heads and, with the charm of alternating light and
shade, gave vitality to the background, once formed as it were a common cir-
cumscribed space; thus one was put in mind of a cavern-scene in the manner of
the Shakespeare stage, serving as abode for the solitary prophetesses. For solitude
is what belongs to these forthtellers of profound visions. Against the architec-
tural setting each of them must surely once have appeared to stand forth, as
from her own special sphere, to receive the tidings of the messenger from above;
the more rigid the structure of beams and pillars, the livelier their emotion, the
more sweeping and airy the flight of the angels, interrupted by the straight
lines of the framework. And taking their place as they do on the top of the arch,
the Sibyls seem still to belong all the while to the air, even though they bend
towards the regions of earth. To-day the figures, with their abundance of soft
red and yellow, with the green and grey and the golden flesh-tones which, on
1 Cugnoni, Archivio della Soc. Romana IV, 1881, p. 64, No. 9.
179
the younger, who founded the fortune of Fabio Chigi (later, Pope Alexander III),
writes in his Commentarii:1 “Under the eyes of Giovanni Lanfranco and the
Cavalier d’Arpino they have begun to clean the fresco with a little moist farm-
house bread and a touch of white-of-egg to liven up the colours, and to make
up certain unimportant parts such as draperies and sky.” At that time the
most beautiful of the Sibyls was already seriously damaged by tracing with oil-
paper. They moved therefore against a background at least as deep in tone as
that retained by the Prophets; perhaps the vistas were more open than in the
upper part. At all events one can recognise, from lines scratched in the green
curtain, that the architecture, of which remnants can be made out on the right
at the head of the angel surging forward above the aged Tiburtina, must have
extended into a hall; only so could the movements of the figures have had any
sense, from the putto with the torch (Plate 195) to the angels, who require for the
beating of their wings as they sweep above the earth more atmosphere than is
afforded between the green curtain-hanging and the cornice beneath the
feet of the Sibyls.
For in Raphael a background is not a foil for the figures; he can entirely
dispense with it, as is shown by his Madonna della Sedia and Madonna della
Tend a. But otherwise the space repeats the rhythm of the movements; the
Alba Madonna is not merely composed in the round—she is also encircled by
the landscape in a wide sweep. Thus the attitudes of the earthly prophetesses
and heavenly messengers are also unthinkable except against a receding back-
ground. The aesthetics of our classicism took a delight in this design, which had
taken on a flavour of style Empire with its flat ground—but Raphael’s horror vacui
would never have tolerated such lifeless surfaces above the figures; they were
pervaded by architectural members of which the lines can still be recognised,
and the perpendicular setting of their pillars provided the animated forms
with a kind of framing. An angular niche of which the cornice and
hollow passed behind the heads and, with the charm of alternating light and
shade, gave vitality to the background, once formed as it were a common cir-
cumscribed space; thus one was put in mind of a cavern-scene in the manner of
the Shakespeare stage, serving as abode for the solitary prophetesses. For solitude
is what belongs to these forthtellers of profound visions. Against the architec-
tural setting each of them must surely once have appeared to stand forth, as
from her own special sphere, to receive the tidings of the messenger from above;
the more rigid the structure of beams and pillars, the livelier their emotion, the
more sweeping and airy the flight of the angels, interrupted by the straight
lines of the framework. And taking their place as they do on the top of the arch,
the Sibyls seem still to belong all the while to the air, even though they bend
towards the regions of earth. To-day the figures, with their abundance of soft
red and yellow, with the green and grey and the golden flesh-tones which, on
1 Cugnoni, Archivio della Soc. Romana IV, 1881, p. 64, No. 9.
179