DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0251
RAPHAEL’S FEELING FOR NATURE
path are conceived as forming, with the figures in front of them, a universe in
themselves, in the same way as, in the Northerner Jan van Eyck, in the Ghent
altarpiece, the citadels and town-halls, the gorges and distant lands, with knights,
judges, hermits and pilgrims!
In the Three Graces of the Ancient World, we have the sense of sunny well-
being in the nude figures played upon by light and breeze—in the St Michael,
the blazing valley of Hell; the St George charges against the monster on the
dank ground; the Conestabile Penserosa meets us on her first spring walk, with
the snowclad hills behind; the Brescia Salvator has suddenly appeared from out
of the universe. The wedding-group in the Sposalizio seems imbued and en-
veloped by the solemnity of the hour, awaited with such excitement, in the
forecourt of the Temple over which a spring day sheds its brightness; and this is
not all—the Temple hall, opening to the expanse, breathes in the landscape.
Here we have the vitality of the great, the genuine architect, who cannot do
otherwise; he can only fit the fashioned stone once again on to and into the
ground, the climate even!
§ Raphael an Observer of Man
As he matures, the creator of form gives expression to his sensibility more
and more in the region of the human figure. In the Florentine Madonnas we
are held by the coherent relationship between the figures of mother and child,
arresting us still on the physical plane but now psychically as well; we observe,
for instance, how the motherly hand of the Madonna del Granduca fits itself to
the round form of the bambino, and the readiness of the child to flee from this
world to the other world of his mother. The tension is here already vital, in his
almost perplexed child’s look, as of an animal scenting a trail, and her mildness
that seems not to be of this earth, but if it is so, then a mystery of heavenly
sacredness in the midst of this tangible world!
A similar motive of the child clinging at the feet of his mother, or of the boy free
to wander within the limits of a garden—even if not of the hortus conclusus—with
its peace of greenery and sunshine, far from the city, fills the charming Madonna
compositions of the Florentine period—a piece of untouched nature, as if coming
from the hand of the Creator, with the simple young mother, to be touched only
from above, the mystery of the “immaculata” as popularly imagined. If we
extract any detail from the background and take it by itself, we are amazed at
its beauty as landscape, and at the deep emotion with which here the young
composer of the concord of man and nature must have carried his impressions
home with him from out-of-doors, in unforgettable freshness. For the prize in
this respect, the view of Lake Trasimene, behind the Madonna in the Meadow
(Plate 238), and the flowing course of the river, may contend with the reflection
in the stream in the St Catherine, in London (Plate 239), almost as in Adriaen
van Ostade or Corot.
233
path are conceived as forming, with the figures in front of them, a universe in
themselves, in the same way as, in the Northerner Jan van Eyck, in the Ghent
altarpiece, the citadels and town-halls, the gorges and distant lands, with knights,
judges, hermits and pilgrims!
In the Three Graces of the Ancient World, we have the sense of sunny well-
being in the nude figures played upon by light and breeze—in the St Michael,
the blazing valley of Hell; the St George charges against the monster on the
dank ground; the Conestabile Penserosa meets us on her first spring walk, with
the snowclad hills behind; the Brescia Salvator has suddenly appeared from out
of the universe. The wedding-group in the Sposalizio seems imbued and en-
veloped by the solemnity of the hour, awaited with such excitement, in the
forecourt of the Temple over which a spring day sheds its brightness; and this is
not all—the Temple hall, opening to the expanse, breathes in the landscape.
Here we have the vitality of the great, the genuine architect, who cannot do
otherwise; he can only fit the fashioned stone once again on to and into the
ground, the climate even!
§ Raphael an Observer of Man
As he matures, the creator of form gives expression to his sensibility more
and more in the region of the human figure. In the Florentine Madonnas we
are held by the coherent relationship between the figures of mother and child,
arresting us still on the physical plane but now psychically as well; we observe,
for instance, how the motherly hand of the Madonna del Granduca fits itself to
the round form of the bambino, and the readiness of the child to flee from this
world to the other world of his mother. The tension is here already vital, in his
almost perplexed child’s look, as of an animal scenting a trail, and her mildness
that seems not to be of this earth, but if it is so, then a mystery of heavenly
sacredness in the midst of this tangible world!
A similar motive of the child clinging at the feet of his mother, or of the boy free
to wander within the limits of a garden—even if not of the hortus conclusus—with
its peace of greenery and sunshine, far from the city, fills the charming Madonna
compositions of the Florentine period—a piece of untouched nature, as if coming
from the hand of the Creator, with the simple young mother, to be touched only
from above, the mystery of the “immaculata” as popularly imagined. If we
extract any detail from the background and take it by itself, we are amazed at
its beauty as landscape, and at the deep emotion with which here the young
composer of the concord of man and nature must have carried his impressions
home with him from out-of-doors, in unforgettable freshness. For the prize in
this respect, the view of Lake Trasimene, behind the Madonna in the Meadow
(Plate 238), and the flowing course of the river, may contend with the reflection
in the stream in the St Catherine, in London (Plate 239), almost as in Adriaen
van Ostade or Corot.
233