DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.53068#0366
RAPHAEL
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, with its profound knowledge of the material, the work
of Passavant, compiled from the Nazarene point of view and with devout,
almost monastic industriousness, the pages in CARL FRIEDRICH VON
RUMOHR’S Italienische Forschungen, have by their penetration into the region
of art become indispensable for a knowledge of Raphael. But the systematised
science that ensued ever sought out and produced for itself new critical and
historical problems, in the thickets of which it lost from view as an entirety
this art which was a matter of truly vital experience. And yet—beneath the
soulless fashions of criticism and aesthetic fanaticism—the spiritual stream main-
tained its irresistible direction.
The Leben Raphaels of HERMANN GRIMM gathered together once again,
before the dawn of a period with no spiritual pretensions, the inheritance of
Weimar in knowledge of the sublime operations of the intellect. His phrase
“Raphael as a World Power”, at that time soon felt to be exaggerated and as
reaching into the void, has ever again proved its truth; as often as there were
minds that knew “how to appreciate merits” of which “the germ is within”
themselves, they felt themselves brought under the compelling power of Raphael,
even if in the course which they took themselves they seemed actually to avoid him.
ADOLF MENZEL acknowledges: “With all his extraordinary art Raphael is
nevertheless artless; a superabundant charm of free, unconstrained, fresh natural
life has been poured out over his works.”1—And if this passionate seeker after
truth bows in reverence before what is elemental in Raphael’s nature, DEGAS,
that one and only poet and musical draughtsman among the Impressionists,
makes his acknowledgments to himby whathe does.2 After the customary academic
notices of the St George, the executioners in the Massacre of the Innocents,
the famous Louvre drawing for the Venus and Psyche in the Farnesina, he
suddenly feels himself spellbound by the “Feed my Lambs” tapestry. What is
it that arrests this master of tranquillity? The gentleness apparent in a pair of
feet, the feet of the figure of Christ who, scarcely staying on the ground, is
taking his leave of the earthly!
Before one of the tapestry-compositions, the Miraculous Draught of
Fishes, a more robust personality, FERDINAND HODLER, stands stirred to
the very depths, when he comes across it unexpectedly in an old oleograph. He
remained long standing in front of it, at first speechless; then gradually col-
lecting himself, he said in a voice of excitement: “That is perhaps the most
beautiful composition an artist ever created. And even in this mediocre repro-
duction, widely divergent from the original, the divine beauty so overcame me
when I beheld it unexpectedly, that I had to struggle with my emotion.”3
Amongst all Northerners it is the Swiss in whom the sense for the true
1 Briefe an C. H. Arnold, 1836, p. 8.
2 Catalogue des Tableaux, Pastels, Dessins; Atelier Degas.
3 Fritz Widmann, Erinnerungen an Ferdinand Hodler (Schweizer Bibliothek, I, p. 62).
348
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, with its profound knowledge of the material, the work
of Passavant, compiled from the Nazarene point of view and with devout,
almost monastic industriousness, the pages in CARL FRIEDRICH VON
RUMOHR’S Italienische Forschungen, have by their penetration into the region
of art become indispensable for a knowledge of Raphael. But the systematised
science that ensued ever sought out and produced for itself new critical and
historical problems, in the thickets of which it lost from view as an entirety
this art which was a matter of truly vital experience. And yet—beneath the
soulless fashions of criticism and aesthetic fanaticism—the spiritual stream main-
tained its irresistible direction.
The Leben Raphaels of HERMANN GRIMM gathered together once again,
before the dawn of a period with no spiritual pretensions, the inheritance of
Weimar in knowledge of the sublime operations of the intellect. His phrase
“Raphael as a World Power”, at that time soon felt to be exaggerated and as
reaching into the void, has ever again proved its truth; as often as there were
minds that knew “how to appreciate merits” of which “the germ is within”
themselves, they felt themselves brought under the compelling power of Raphael,
even if in the course which they took themselves they seemed actually to avoid him.
ADOLF MENZEL acknowledges: “With all his extraordinary art Raphael is
nevertheless artless; a superabundant charm of free, unconstrained, fresh natural
life has been poured out over his works.”1—And if this passionate seeker after
truth bows in reverence before what is elemental in Raphael’s nature, DEGAS,
that one and only poet and musical draughtsman among the Impressionists,
makes his acknowledgments to himby whathe does.2 After the customary academic
notices of the St George, the executioners in the Massacre of the Innocents,
the famous Louvre drawing for the Venus and Psyche in the Farnesina, he
suddenly feels himself spellbound by the “Feed my Lambs” tapestry. What is
it that arrests this master of tranquillity? The gentleness apparent in a pair of
feet, the feet of the figure of Christ who, scarcely staying on the ground, is
taking his leave of the earthly!
Before one of the tapestry-compositions, the Miraculous Draught of
Fishes, a more robust personality, FERDINAND HODLER, stands stirred to
the very depths, when he comes across it unexpectedly in an old oleograph. He
remained long standing in front of it, at first speechless; then gradually col-
lecting himself, he said in a voice of excitement: “That is perhaps the most
beautiful composition an artist ever created. And even in this mediocre repro-
duction, widely divergent from the original, the divine beauty so overcame me
when I beheld it unexpectedly, that I had to struggle with my emotion.”3
Amongst all Northerners it is the Swiss in whom the sense for the true
1 Briefe an C. H. Arnold, 1836, p. 8.
2 Catalogue des Tableaux, Pastels, Dessins; Atelier Degas.
3 Fritz Widmann, Erinnerungen an Ferdinand Hodler (Schweizer Bibliothek, I, p. 62).
348