DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0352
RAPHAEL
deep sensibility, with head naturally uplifted.”1 “As painter I should like to
be Titian, as man, best of all to be Raphael.”
And Heinse asks himself whether Raphael would not have cast aside the
brush if he had lived to grow older; and he seems to suspect that the ambition
of his maturity must inevitably have risen above painting; the cardinal’s hat
for which he “aspired” would only need to have been replaced by the longing to
be an architect.
LAVATER in his fragmentary writings on physiognomy has proved often
enough by introspection and outward observation “that love is the most sharp-
sighted of observers”. But can we refrain from a sympathetic smile at such
surrender to the worthiest object of devotion when like many in those days, he
thought to recognise Raphael’s traits even “to the hair” in the portrait now in
the Czartoryski Collection (Plate 133),2 3 and ends up with the words: “to paint like
this such features were also necessary"! For the proposition “of the harmony of moral
and bodily beauty” held good for him unshakably, and since Raphael was for him
“an apostolic man”, that is, “in comparison with other painters what the Apostles
were as compared with the rest of mankind”, so he was inwardly prepared when he
was introduced to the celebrated and authenticated self-portrait in Florence
(he saw it in a fine and tolerably faithful reproduction by the excellent Johann
Heinrich Lips); the spirit led him to point out the truest features, that
are still confirmed for us to-day by the original in Florence. “This picture—
how can I look at it—can anyone—without perceiving in it—or better, feeling
in it, the creator of the loveliest figures, that is, the man of all-embracing
vision, the sensitive portrayer of what is most beautiful in nature, with but a
glance at all that is common and bad? How simple and harmonious the whole!*
Is it possible not to see in this face the simple lofty character of all his works?
Love and sensual delight, single-heartedness and high poetic sense, are poured
out over the whole face. ... In this open, simple, innocent brow that we see
before us here, is the most effortless impressionability. . . . The eyebrows are
entirely those of the poet-painter’, and the mouth—what an everlasting symbol of
loving rapture and languishing singleness of heart!”
§ Antique and Christian in Art
The essential difference between Raphael and the Greeks dawned
upon Lavater also, as on Herder, as something he experienced, through
ordinary scholastic comparison with the Antique: “The works of Greek art are
also simple—but they have not the human, intimate quality that, in spite of
their sublimity, still strikes us in so many of the best compositions of Raphael. All
1 Ibid.., p. 61.
2 Physiognomische Fragmente, I, p. 117.
3 Physiognomische Fragmente, I, pp. 58 ff.
334
deep sensibility, with head naturally uplifted.”1 “As painter I should like to
be Titian, as man, best of all to be Raphael.”
And Heinse asks himself whether Raphael would not have cast aside the
brush if he had lived to grow older; and he seems to suspect that the ambition
of his maturity must inevitably have risen above painting; the cardinal’s hat
for which he “aspired” would only need to have been replaced by the longing to
be an architect.
LAVATER in his fragmentary writings on physiognomy has proved often
enough by introspection and outward observation “that love is the most sharp-
sighted of observers”. But can we refrain from a sympathetic smile at such
surrender to the worthiest object of devotion when like many in those days, he
thought to recognise Raphael’s traits even “to the hair” in the portrait now in
the Czartoryski Collection (Plate 133),2 3 and ends up with the words: “to paint like
this such features were also necessary"! For the proposition “of the harmony of moral
and bodily beauty” held good for him unshakably, and since Raphael was for him
“an apostolic man”, that is, “in comparison with other painters what the Apostles
were as compared with the rest of mankind”, so he was inwardly prepared when he
was introduced to the celebrated and authenticated self-portrait in Florence
(he saw it in a fine and tolerably faithful reproduction by the excellent Johann
Heinrich Lips); the spirit led him to point out the truest features, that
are still confirmed for us to-day by the original in Florence. “This picture—
how can I look at it—can anyone—without perceiving in it—or better, feeling
in it, the creator of the loveliest figures, that is, the man of all-embracing
vision, the sensitive portrayer of what is most beautiful in nature, with but a
glance at all that is common and bad? How simple and harmonious the whole!*
Is it possible not to see in this face the simple lofty character of all his works?
Love and sensual delight, single-heartedness and high poetic sense, are poured
out over the whole face. ... In this open, simple, innocent brow that we see
before us here, is the most effortless impressionability. . . . The eyebrows are
entirely those of the poet-painter’, and the mouth—what an everlasting symbol of
loving rapture and languishing singleness of heart!”
§ Antique and Christian in Art
The essential difference between Raphael and the Greeks dawned
upon Lavater also, as on Herder, as something he experienced, through
ordinary scholastic comparison with the Antique: “The works of Greek art are
also simple—but they have not the human, intimate quality that, in spite of
their sublimity, still strikes us in so many of the best compositions of Raphael. All
1 Ibid.., p. 61.
2 Physiognomische Fragmente, I, p. 117.
3 Physiognomische Fragmente, I, pp. 58 ff.
334