DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0219
RAPHAEL AS HUMANIST
passionately to attain the luminous heights. His knowledge as a painter of
4‘lightness and light” in its highest degree of intensity, prompted him then, in
the secular sphere, once again to make cupolas opening out in pantheistic manner
into landscape, above the pierced and ornament-fretted pillars of the soaring halls
of the Villa Madama. Finally, his last wish, for a tomb under the vault of Pantheon
(Plate 302), revealed the same acknowledgment of the Beyond that guided him
in the presence of Antique sculptures and never abandoned him. The concep-
tion of a last resting-place beneath the unequalled solemnity of this dome dedi-
cated to the sublime heavenly beings, has provided subsequent ages with the
architectural idea, and often the name, for their cult of heroes. Raphael was
followed in the Pantheon by less immortal beings, but the conception of a con-
secrated asylum provided in death for the genius of a nation and for its great
sons, a conception that has been adopted since that time by all nations, goes
back in the last resort to his interpretation of the Beyond in architecture. His
desires overleaped the limits and earthly laws of the building; he saw only
transfiguration. “Vom Dust Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen.”1
§ Raphael’s Draughtsmen of the Antique. The Reconstruction of Rome
The two souls of Faust dwelt in the breast of him of “all-embracing vision”;
no stranger in the heights and the depths, he strove after his sublime an-
cestors; it was part of his nature to look back towards his origin whilst striving to
attain his aims. Only so can be explained his propensity, creator and originator
though he was, for an ever closer acquaintance with, and devotion to, the art
of the Ancients. It sounds quite credible when Vasari, with a sense of awe
in the presence of the greatness that set in motion forces with such an aim,
records “Era tanta la grandezza di questo uomo”—so exalted was this man’s
disposition—that he kept draughtsmen employed throughout Italy, at Pozzuoli
and even in Greece; their duty was to copy and report to him whatever there
was of value in the way of Ancient art. He offers the spectacle of an enduring
power of attraction and readiness to accept what presents itself, whilst never-
theless reserving all the time to himself, in his high conception of his own dignity
and mission, the choice of what he willed to make his own. More important
however would seem to be what the productive genius gives in return, his
masterpiece (in Leonardo’s sense)—the searching out of the archetype, with a
view to creative activity in emulation of it. And so, to the astonishment of his
contemporaries, he is impelled to undertake that reconstruction of Ancient Rome of
which no vestige has come down to us unless it be the report, tinged almost
with horror, as though it recorded a raising of the spirits of the mighty dead.
§ Conservator of Antiquities
After Fra Giocondo’s death on 27th August, 1515, Raphael was appointed
1 “Out of the mist To regions of an ancestry sublime.”
201
passionately to attain the luminous heights. His knowledge as a painter of
4‘lightness and light” in its highest degree of intensity, prompted him then, in
the secular sphere, once again to make cupolas opening out in pantheistic manner
into landscape, above the pierced and ornament-fretted pillars of the soaring halls
of the Villa Madama. Finally, his last wish, for a tomb under the vault of Pantheon
(Plate 302), revealed the same acknowledgment of the Beyond that guided him
in the presence of Antique sculptures and never abandoned him. The concep-
tion of a last resting-place beneath the unequalled solemnity of this dome dedi-
cated to the sublime heavenly beings, has provided subsequent ages with the
architectural idea, and often the name, for their cult of heroes. Raphael was
followed in the Pantheon by less immortal beings, but the conception of a con-
secrated asylum provided in death for the genius of a nation and for its great
sons, a conception that has been adopted since that time by all nations, goes
back in the last resort to his interpretation of the Beyond in architecture. His
desires overleaped the limits and earthly laws of the building; he saw only
transfiguration. “Vom Dust Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen.”1
§ Raphael’s Draughtsmen of the Antique. The Reconstruction of Rome
The two souls of Faust dwelt in the breast of him of “all-embracing vision”;
no stranger in the heights and the depths, he strove after his sublime an-
cestors; it was part of his nature to look back towards his origin whilst striving to
attain his aims. Only so can be explained his propensity, creator and originator
though he was, for an ever closer acquaintance with, and devotion to, the art
of the Ancients. It sounds quite credible when Vasari, with a sense of awe
in the presence of the greatness that set in motion forces with such an aim,
records “Era tanta la grandezza di questo uomo”—so exalted was this man’s
disposition—that he kept draughtsmen employed throughout Italy, at Pozzuoli
and even in Greece; their duty was to copy and report to him whatever there
was of value in the way of Ancient art. He offers the spectacle of an enduring
power of attraction and readiness to accept what presents itself, whilst never-
theless reserving all the time to himself, in his high conception of his own dignity
and mission, the choice of what he willed to make his own. More important
however would seem to be what the productive genius gives in return, his
masterpiece (in Leonardo’s sense)—the searching out of the archetype, with a
view to creative activity in emulation of it. And so, to the astonishment of his
contemporaries, he is impelled to undertake that reconstruction of Ancient Rome of
which no vestige has come down to us unless it be the report, tinged almost
with horror, as though it recorded a raising of the spirits of the mighty dead.
§ Conservator of Antiquities
After Fra Giocondo’s death on 27th August, 1515, Raphael was appointed
1 “Out of the mist To regions of an ancestry sublime.”
201