DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0353
AFTER-ECHOES OF RAPHAEL
his Maries, Johns, Josephs, all his figures of Jesus, have still so much of the
domestic, the bourgeois about them—so much familiarity.”1
§ Sure Eye for Style
Where has recent exact science, whose exponents feel themselves so superior
to the physiognomists, shown more precise observation than Lavater, in the
case of the head of the Francis I Madonna in the Louvre, which is presumably
the work of Giulio Romano? His criticism takes a positive turn, with absolutely
illuminating clarity: “It is not bad, although the sharp purity of outline is lacking
in it, that unattainable little more that raises all the Raphael heads of his best
period so far above ordinary earthliness.”2
Lavater—the contemporary of the young Mozart—does not know “if there
are Raphaels in music”—but a figure of Raphael’s, a strophe of Klopstock, an
air of Pergolesi, are to him, for eye, ear and heart, exaltation itself.
§ The young Goethe
The head of a monk after Raphael, over which “Goethe’s effusion came
nearest to the truth”, must ever be allowed to stand as the loveliest testimony
to the justified effort of the physiognomist (Fig. 3, p. 336). The twenty-six-
year-old GOETHE, who had just made his first acquaintance at Strasburg
with Raphael’s tapestries, thus interprets the expression of the face:
“It seems to me to denote most of all a thinker full of sensibility, whose
heart has long beaten in presentiment of a truth as to which belief and doubt
have hovered by turns over his brow—and all at once there stands before him
the sensual certainty of what he has been conjecturing and hoping. His eye
and eyebrows are raised in a triumphant look of joy, enduring sanction rests
on his brow, and his heart, now beating quite freely, presses forward towards
the loving lips of the longed-for object. In short, it is for me the man who,
through a sensual miracle, is rewarded for much loving, feeling and desire.”
If Lavater often moves in the realm of conjecture, his collaborator here
reaches with a wide and sure sweep into the region of genius, the discovery of
which speaks even from the slightest reproduction. He had before him nothing
but the copy of Johann Heinrich Lips after the old facsimile, by the French
artist J. Bonneau, of a lost drawing; only in our time has it become known that
this head of a monk appears not in the fresco, but in early studies for the Disputa,
the most spiritual in a group of figures striving in common towards the goal of
the Sacrament. So it is shown by the drawings in London and Paris (R. VII,
267-68). And through the misrepresentations of the twofold copy, the eye of
the true poet yet recognises the intention of the kindred spirit of the “poetical”
painter. It seemed to be foreordained that they must inevitably meet in their
common sphere.
1 Physiognomische Fragmente, III, 60.
2 Physiognomische Fragmente, IV, 402.
335
his Maries, Johns, Josephs, all his figures of Jesus, have still so much of the
domestic, the bourgeois about them—so much familiarity.”1
§ Sure Eye for Style
Where has recent exact science, whose exponents feel themselves so superior
to the physiognomists, shown more precise observation than Lavater, in the
case of the head of the Francis I Madonna in the Louvre, which is presumably
the work of Giulio Romano? His criticism takes a positive turn, with absolutely
illuminating clarity: “It is not bad, although the sharp purity of outline is lacking
in it, that unattainable little more that raises all the Raphael heads of his best
period so far above ordinary earthliness.”2
Lavater—the contemporary of the young Mozart—does not know “if there
are Raphaels in music”—but a figure of Raphael’s, a strophe of Klopstock, an
air of Pergolesi, are to him, for eye, ear and heart, exaltation itself.
§ The young Goethe
The head of a monk after Raphael, over which “Goethe’s effusion came
nearest to the truth”, must ever be allowed to stand as the loveliest testimony
to the justified effort of the physiognomist (Fig. 3, p. 336). The twenty-six-
year-old GOETHE, who had just made his first acquaintance at Strasburg
with Raphael’s tapestries, thus interprets the expression of the face:
“It seems to me to denote most of all a thinker full of sensibility, whose
heart has long beaten in presentiment of a truth as to which belief and doubt
have hovered by turns over his brow—and all at once there stands before him
the sensual certainty of what he has been conjecturing and hoping. His eye
and eyebrows are raised in a triumphant look of joy, enduring sanction rests
on his brow, and his heart, now beating quite freely, presses forward towards
the loving lips of the longed-for object. In short, it is for me the man who,
through a sensual miracle, is rewarded for much loving, feeling and desire.”
If Lavater often moves in the realm of conjecture, his collaborator here
reaches with a wide and sure sweep into the region of genius, the discovery of
which speaks even from the slightest reproduction. He had before him nothing
but the copy of Johann Heinrich Lips after the old facsimile, by the French
artist J. Bonneau, of a lost drawing; only in our time has it become known that
this head of a monk appears not in the fresco, but in early studies for the Disputa,
the most spiritual in a group of figures striving in common towards the goal of
the Sacrament. So it is shown by the drawings in London and Paris (R. VII,
267-68). And through the misrepresentations of the twofold copy, the eye of
the true poet yet recognises the intention of the kindred spirit of the “poetical”
painter. It seemed to be foreordained that they must inevitably meet in their
common sphere.
1 Physiognomische Fragmente, III, 60.
2 Physiognomische Fragmente, IV, 402.
335