DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61022#0036
EARLY YEARS
of revolt or of acquiescence, leads, as a rule, to sterility, since
it aims at a perfection too comprehensive to be achieved. It
was, therefore, Raphael’s luck or a necessity to his development
that he should begin in contentment within a narrow sphere.
He learnt to paint in his father’s studio before he had learnt
to exercise his eyes upon nature. His appreciation of nature
grew with his appreciation of art, and there was no conflict
between the beauty which he saw for himself in outward
appearance and the beauty which men had seized and expressed
in the pictures which he was taught to paint. Such conflict
shows itself either in desperate innovation, in absolute failure,
or in eager adoption of some style alien to that of the school
in which the painter is apprenticed. Of this there is little
sign in Raphael. At no time is his work, as far as it is known,
quite without distinctive features of its own, and these features
may have been, for all that we can tell, deliberate innovations
looming so largely in their creator’s eye, that he was unconscious
of the general conformity of his work as a whole. But if they
were, no external record shows that the innovating spirit showed
itself in such material actions as might be expected of it, and
the further back the impression which Raphael produced upon
men can be traced, the more it appears to have been an impres-
sion of discipleship and acquiescence. Raphael’s innovations were
unconscious variations upon an accepted theme, the result of
looking at nature with eyes, personal enough, but schooled within
a definite tradition, and the reason that he could afterwards attain
so great a power in a wider field is that his power of representa-
tion grew together with his power of vision and his range of
imagination, and he learnt the command of his art-methods before
he had imagined a field of art too great for him to represent.
In other words, Raphael’s strength lay in the fact that he
began his life as a professional painter, a man whose trade and
business it was to paint pictures, and whose pride to produce an
article,—to use appropriately enough the language of commerce,—
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of revolt or of acquiescence, leads, as a rule, to sterility, since
it aims at a perfection too comprehensive to be achieved. It
was, therefore, Raphael’s luck or a necessity to his development
that he should begin in contentment within a narrow sphere.
He learnt to paint in his father’s studio before he had learnt
to exercise his eyes upon nature. His appreciation of nature
grew with his appreciation of art, and there was no conflict
between the beauty which he saw for himself in outward
appearance and the beauty which men had seized and expressed
in the pictures which he was taught to paint. Such conflict
shows itself either in desperate innovation, in absolute failure,
or in eager adoption of some style alien to that of the school
in which the painter is apprenticed. Of this there is little
sign in Raphael. At no time is his work, as far as it is known,
quite without distinctive features of its own, and these features
may have been, for all that we can tell, deliberate innovations
looming so largely in their creator’s eye, that he was unconscious
of the general conformity of his work as a whole. But if they
were, no external record shows that the innovating spirit showed
itself in such material actions as might be expected of it, and
the further back the impression which Raphael produced upon
men can be traced, the more it appears to have been an impres-
sion of discipleship and acquiescence. Raphael’s innovations were
unconscious variations upon an accepted theme, the result of
looking at nature with eyes, personal enough, but schooled within
a definite tradition, and the reason that he could afterwards attain
so great a power in a wider field is that his power of representa-
tion grew together with his power of vision and his range of
imagination, and he learnt the command of his art-methods before
he had imagined a field of art too great for him to represent.
In other words, Raphael’s strength lay in the fact that he
began his life as a professional painter, a man whose trade and
business it was to paint pictures, and whose pride to produce an
article,—to use appropriately enough the language of commerce,—
14