DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61022#0094
THE ART OF THE TRANSITION PERIOD
unaffected, than the Florentine with its excursions into strange
characteristics and its insistence upon accidents of form and
feature, its extravagance, even, of face or drapery.
In another Madonna of this period, ruined as it is by restora-
tion, the beginnings of this tendency in Raphael are to be observed.
This is the ‘ Madonna Tempi ’ of Munich (Plate xxvm.), for which
a definite Florentine model can be found in one of the little
medallions in Donatello’s relief of the ‘ Miracle of Rimini ’ on the
high altar of Saint Anthony at Padua.1 In this picture, perhaps
for the first time in Raphael’s work, the figures of Mother and
Child are brought together in a moment of concentrating action,
not merely, as in the other pictures, joined together by a restful
pose which exhibited both, but left each figure to some extent
independent of the other. Here they are inextricably interwoven
by a common and enthralling movement. In the ruined state of
the picture it is impossible to judge how far Raphael was successful
in imparting the feeling of the moment to the two faces, but it
is possible that they never showed to a greater extent than now a
complete absorption. The arms, too, are somewhat stiff and
nerveless, showing that while he knew enough of bodily forms to
give ease to limbs in repose, he could not yet bring them with
success into purposeful action. It is still enough for him to
weave them into a fair pattern without inspiring them with a
sense of their own activity and motion. The Infant’s head,
shoulders, and arm, and his hanging legs, give the note of life
which is missing in the other portions of the picture. Yet, with
this inequality, the picture marks an advance, and there is yet
another token of a change in taste. Though the mantle of the
Virgin, which had disappeared from the ‘ Cowper Madonna,’ still
covers her head, it is thrown in more ample and flowing folds
around her body, giving her something of the majesty of one of
Fra Bartolommeo’s or Raphael’s own later figures, and her sleeve,
loose and puckered, occurs here first in Raphael’s pictures to show
1 Cf. Schmarsow, Donatello, p. 46, n. 1.
72
unaffected, than the Florentine with its excursions into strange
characteristics and its insistence upon accidents of form and
feature, its extravagance, even, of face or drapery.
In another Madonna of this period, ruined as it is by restora-
tion, the beginnings of this tendency in Raphael are to be observed.
This is the ‘ Madonna Tempi ’ of Munich (Plate xxvm.), for which
a definite Florentine model can be found in one of the little
medallions in Donatello’s relief of the ‘ Miracle of Rimini ’ on the
high altar of Saint Anthony at Padua.1 In this picture, perhaps
for the first time in Raphael’s work, the figures of Mother and
Child are brought together in a moment of concentrating action,
not merely, as in the other pictures, joined together by a restful
pose which exhibited both, but left each figure to some extent
independent of the other. Here they are inextricably interwoven
by a common and enthralling movement. In the ruined state of
the picture it is impossible to judge how far Raphael was successful
in imparting the feeling of the moment to the two faces, but it
is possible that they never showed to a greater extent than now a
complete absorption. The arms, too, are somewhat stiff and
nerveless, showing that while he knew enough of bodily forms to
give ease to limbs in repose, he could not yet bring them with
success into purposeful action. It is still enough for him to
weave them into a fair pattern without inspiring them with a
sense of their own activity and motion. The Infant’s head,
shoulders, and arm, and his hanging legs, give the note of life
which is missing in the other portions of the picture. Yet, with
this inequality, the picture marks an advance, and there is yet
another token of a change in taste. Though the mantle of the
Virgin, which had disappeared from the ‘ Cowper Madonna,’ still
covers her head, it is thrown in more ample and flowing folds
around her body, giving her something of the majesty of one of
Fra Bartolommeo’s or Raphael’s own later figures, and her sleeve,
loose and puckered, occurs here first in Raphael’s pictures to show
1 Cf. Schmarsow, Donatello, p. 46, n. 1.
72