DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0226
RAPHAEL
Everywhere there was talk of a beginning, and initiated persons actually
knew what the method was to be; it seems to have been the same proposed in
the Memorial, found worthy of mention also by PAOLO GIOVIO in his
short sketch of Raphael’s life—the compass:
4‘Raphael died in the flower of his life, just when he had undertaken to
measure the remains of the buildings of Rome; he had devised a new and
wonderful means of doing this, so as to present the city as he saw it, as if
new, before the eyes of the architects”:
“Id autem facile consequebantur, descriptis in piano pedali situ ventorumque
lineis, ad quarum normam sicuti nautae ex pictae membranae magnetisque
usu maris ac litorum spatia depraechendunt, ita ipse laterum angulorumque
naturam ex fundamentis certissima ratione colligebat.”
“This however could easily be followed from the site and the lines of the
winds drawn on a flat chart, by the help of which as a norm, just as sailors
by using a painted parchment and a magnet make out the distances of sea
and shores, he himself deduced from the foundations of the buildings (the
remnants of walls) the nature of their superficies, sides and angles, in
accordance with an unfailing principle.”
The Venetian art-lover Marcantonio, in his report of Raphael’s death five
years later to a fellow-countryman in his birthplace, comes even nearer to the
indubitable truth that, far beyond all copying and measuring, the master’s
artistic imagination went straight to the formulation of the results and made
reconstruction intelligible:
“Raphael. . . died, to the sorrow of everyone—but scholars have most of
all reason for sorrow; after them, painters and architects. For just as the
geographer Ptolemy described the world, so Raphael intended to represent
in a book the ancient buildings of Rome, and in this work he showed their
proportions, their forms and decorations so clearly that everyone who saw
these pictures—che averlo veduto haria iscusato ad ogniuno aver veduta Roma
antiqua—-could justly say it was as good as if he had seen ancient Rome—
He had already finished the First Region. In this he showed the plans and
situation of the buildings, which he had copied with the greatest care and
devotion from the ruins themselves but he drew also the exterior aspects
(le facia) with their decorative members in a very expressive manner, as
he had learnt from Vitruvius and in accordance with the rules of archi-
tecture (delle regole de la architectural and from ancient traditions, where the
original aspect was no longer retained by the ruins.—Now death has inter-
208
Everywhere there was talk of a beginning, and initiated persons actually
knew what the method was to be; it seems to have been the same proposed in
the Memorial, found worthy of mention also by PAOLO GIOVIO in his
short sketch of Raphael’s life—the compass:
4‘Raphael died in the flower of his life, just when he had undertaken to
measure the remains of the buildings of Rome; he had devised a new and
wonderful means of doing this, so as to present the city as he saw it, as if
new, before the eyes of the architects”:
“Id autem facile consequebantur, descriptis in piano pedali situ ventorumque
lineis, ad quarum normam sicuti nautae ex pictae membranae magnetisque
usu maris ac litorum spatia depraechendunt, ita ipse laterum angulorumque
naturam ex fundamentis certissima ratione colligebat.”
“This however could easily be followed from the site and the lines of the
winds drawn on a flat chart, by the help of which as a norm, just as sailors
by using a painted parchment and a magnet make out the distances of sea
and shores, he himself deduced from the foundations of the buildings (the
remnants of walls) the nature of their superficies, sides and angles, in
accordance with an unfailing principle.”
The Venetian art-lover Marcantonio, in his report of Raphael’s death five
years later to a fellow-countryman in his birthplace, comes even nearer to the
indubitable truth that, far beyond all copying and measuring, the master’s
artistic imagination went straight to the formulation of the results and made
reconstruction intelligible:
“Raphael. . . died, to the sorrow of everyone—but scholars have most of
all reason for sorrow; after them, painters and architects. For just as the
geographer Ptolemy described the world, so Raphael intended to represent
in a book the ancient buildings of Rome, and in this work he showed their
proportions, their forms and decorations so clearly that everyone who saw
these pictures—che averlo veduto haria iscusato ad ogniuno aver veduta Roma
antiqua—-could justly say it was as good as if he had seen ancient Rome—
He had already finished the First Region. In this he showed the plans and
situation of the buildings, which he had copied with the greatest care and
devotion from the ruins themselves but he drew also the exterior aspects
(le facia) with their decorative members in a very expressive manner, as
he had learnt from Vitruvius and in accordance with the rules of archi-
tecture (delle regole de la architectural and from ancient traditions, where the
original aspect was no longer retained by the ruins.—Now death has inter-
208