DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0253
RAPHAEL’S FEELING FOR NATURE
one possessed, as for instance, in his angels with their violently beating pinions
in the Heliodorus, or in the quiet, flowing movement in the compassionate figure
of the young apostle in the Transfiguration (Plate 268). In his creations, the
subconscious world of man comes out, and thus he stands already on the
threshold of that realm into which the Belvedere Apollo was able to guide
him as his Musagetes.
§ Light as Expression: Supersession of the Material
And at this point he rises to complete eminence through the power of light.
Having grown up in the school of Piero della Francesca and Melozzo da Forli, he
repeatedly paid his respects to their works when staying in his native place; in
Florence he was fortunate in finding a reflection of them in the luminous frescoes
of Perugino, in the monastery of the Gesuati outside the Porta Pinti. Soon he
pressed on from observations of the effect of sunlight that give solemnity to his
Madonna del Baldacchino and a happy note to his Colonna Madonna, to mastery
of light; the Deliverance of Peter owes its effect to the contrast between the
unearthly glow and the earthly lights of moon and torch—but the true miraculous-
ness of this night scene derives entirely from the dazzling effect caused by the window
below. The actual, common daylight gives its own radiance—as in Rembrandt’s
Faust etching—to the apparition out of the beyond, and the spectral is exalted
into the heroic by a touch of nature which makes itself felt in the picture—the
drift of storm-clouds with the half-veiled crescent moon above the city of Ancient
Rome.
Here too it becomes clear how the material element begins to be done away
with—it withdraws more and more into the background in the presence of the con-
ception of the Deliverance of Peter. The scene of the incident, the Mamertine
Prison, becomes simply an abstraction, “prison bars” between two pillars of
masonry built as if for eternity. The enduring features of great stage drama, as in
the mounting of the mystery-plays, and in Shakespeare too, come into play also
for this dramatic painter, the essential, and nothing else—and the essential is
that which is capable of showing the way to the imagination. The practice of the
Dugento was not different from this, in representing the prison of John the
Baptist.
§ Selection of Essential Traits in the Portrait
It is just this which makes of the secret Gothicist in Raphael the most pro-
found of interpreters in painting portraits; thus in a task that seems pledged to
the closest adherence to nature, it commits him at the very outset to observation in
the presence of a given model. Here the passion with which he attacks character-
istic traits instead of becoming subservient to the prescribed form, his peculiarly
poetical nature, can be most clearly perceived. In actual life, anatomically, one
would never find the subject of the portrait in such an attitude—nowhere such
a turn of the head to full face on a neck seen three-quarters front; thus already in
235
one possessed, as for instance, in his angels with their violently beating pinions
in the Heliodorus, or in the quiet, flowing movement in the compassionate figure
of the young apostle in the Transfiguration (Plate 268). In his creations, the
subconscious world of man comes out, and thus he stands already on the
threshold of that realm into which the Belvedere Apollo was able to guide
him as his Musagetes.
§ Light as Expression: Supersession of the Material
And at this point he rises to complete eminence through the power of light.
Having grown up in the school of Piero della Francesca and Melozzo da Forli, he
repeatedly paid his respects to their works when staying in his native place; in
Florence he was fortunate in finding a reflection of them in the luminous frescoes
of Perugino, in the monastery of the Gesuati outside the Porta Pinti. Soon he
pressed on from observations of the effect of sunlight that give solemnity to his
Madonna del Baldacchino and a happy note to his Colonna Madonna, to mastery
of light; the Deliverance of Peter owes its effect to the contrast between the
unearthly glow and the earthly lights of moon and torch—but the true miraculous-
ness of this night scene derives entirely from the dazzling effect caused by the window
below. The actual, common daylight gives its own radiance—as in Rembrandt’s
Faust etching—to the apparition out of the beyond, and the spectral is exalted
into the heroic by a touch of nature which makes itself felt in the picture—the
drift of storm-clouds with the half-veiled crescent moon above the city of Ancient
Rome.
Here too it becomes clear how the material element begins to be done away
with—it withdraws more and more into the background in the presence of the con-
ception of the Deliverance of Peter. The scene of the incident, the Mamertine
Prison, becomes simply an abstraction, “prison bars” between two pillars of
masonry built as if for eternity. The enduring features of great stage drama, as in
the mounting of the mystery-plays, and in Shakespeare too, come into play also
for this dramatic painter, the essential, and nothing else—and the essential is
that which is capable of showing the way to the imagination. The practice of the
Dugento was not different from this, in representing the prison of John the
Baptist.
§ Selection of Essential Traits in the Portrait
It is just this which makes of the secret Gothicist in Raphael the most pro-
found of interpreters in painting portraits; thus in a task that seems pledged to
the closest adherence to nature, it commits him at the very outset to observation in
the presence of a given model. Here the passion with which he attacks character-
istic traits instead of becoming subservient to the prescribed form, his peculiarly
poetical nature, can be most clearly perceived. In actual life, anatomically, one
would never find the subject of the portrait in such an attitude—nowhere such
a turn of the head to full face on a neck seen three-quarters front; thus already in
235