DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0225
RAPHAEL AS HUMANIST
“Tu quoque dum to to laniatam corpore Romam
Componis miro, Raphael, ingenio
Atque urbis lacerum ferro, igni, annisque cadaver
Ad vitam, antiquum jam revocasque decus,
Movisti Superum invidiam, indignataque mors est,
Te dudum extinctis reddere posse animam.”
“Thou didst excite the jealousy of heaven, when thou didst with thy mar-
vellous mind reconstruct Rome, her body all violated; when thou didst call
back to life and to her ancient beauty the corpse of the sublime city, wasted
with war, fire and age, death was angry that it should have been granted
thee to restore to the departed life extinguished.”
In a poem that probably has for its author Raphael’s admirer, the Apostolic
Protonotary Celio Calcagnini, we read, obviously from the most intimate
acquaintance:
“The ancestors and centuries that went to the building of Rome are
equalled in multitude by the enemies and races that have destroyed it;
and now—
“Romam in Roma querit reperitque Raphael;
Querere magni hominis, sed reperire Dei est.”
“Now a Raphael seeks in Rome for Rome, and finds it;
seeking belongs to an exalted mind, finding, to a God.”
It is the same CELIO CALCAGNINI to whom we owe, in the prose of one of
his letters, the truly poetical, because sculpturesque portrait of Raphael in the
perfection of his last years; we read there that he superintended the Office of
Works of St Peter’s—but also that “ipsam plane urbem in antiquam faciem et
amplitudinem ac symmetriam instauratam magna parte ostendit”—he has
undertaken to reinstate the former appearance of the Ancient City, its splendour
and its great beauty in relation to its individual parts, and he has already a
large portion of it to show.
He was thus seen to be making discoveries, and it was known that the Pope was
favourable to his venture. The remains should be investigated thoroughly down
to the foundations, and the finds should be made secure in pictures:
“et pictis mandare tabellis
Sed tanti artificem monumenti in limine primo
Sustulit ac Claris mors obstitit invida coeptis.”—
“Yet the master of so mighty a monument death snatched
away at the first outset, jealously opposing so glorious
a beginning.”
207
“Tu quoque dum to to laniatam corpore Romam
Componis miro, Raphael, ingenio
Atque urbis lacerum ferro, igni, annisque cadaver
Ad vitam, antiquum jam revocasque decus,
Movisti Superum invidiam, indignataque mors est,
Te dudum extinctis reddere posse animam.”
“Thou didst excite the jealousy of heaven, when thou didst with thy mar-
vellous mind reconstruct Rome, her body all violated; when thou didst call
back to life and to her ancient beauty the corpse of the sublime city, wasted
with war, fire and age, death was angry that it should have been granted
thee to restore to the departed life extinguished.”
In a poem that probably has for its author Raphael’s admirer, the Apostolic
Protonotary Celio Calcagnini, we read, obviously from the most intimate
acquaintance:
“The ancestors and centuries that went to the building of Rome are
equalled in multitude by the enemies and races that have destroyed it;
and now—
“Romam in Roma querit reperitque Raphael;
Querere magni hominis, sed reperire Dei est.”
“Now a Raphael seeks in Rome for Rome, and finds it;
seeking belongs to an exalted mind, finding, to a God.”
It is the same CELIO CALCAGNINI to whom we owe, in the prose of one of
his letters, the truly poetical, because sculpturesque portrait of Raphael in the
perfection of his last years; we read there that he superintended the Office of
Works of St Peter’s—but also that “ipsam plane urbem in antiquam faciem et
amplitudinem ac symmetriam instauratam magna parte ostendit”—he has
undertaken to reinstate the former appearance of the Ancient City, its splendour
and its great beauty in relation to its individual parts, and he has already a
large portion of it to show.
He was thus seen to be making discoveries, and it was known that the Pope was
favourable to his venture. The remains should be investigated thoroughly down
to the foundations, and the finds should be made secure in pictures:
“et pictis mandare tabellis
Sed tanti artificem monumenti in limine primo
Sustulit ac Claris mors obstitit invida coeptis.”—
“Yet the master of so mighty a monument death snatched
away at the first outset, jealously opposing so glorious
a beginning.”
207