DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61022#0114
RAPHAEL AT ROME
painters who may be these, tell of men whose work is other-
wise unknown, or whose work at Rome had otherwise escaped
record.1 The decorations as they stand at present show portions
which are clearly not Raphael’s work, and can be attributed with
much show of reason to Perugino, Sodoma and Baldassare Peruzzi,
but whether they are the only remains which were spared in a
general destruction or the fragments of incomplete undertakings
cannot be decided. In any case they show, and the disposition of
Raphael’s own decorations shows more clearly, the gradual nature
of his task. For three years he worked steadily, and perhaps
alone, at the decoration of the first room, which was set apart to
be the meeting-place of the Papal Court called the Segnatura,2
leaving the chamber through which it was approached on either
side untouched and adding nothing, changing nothing, in the
architectural framework of the rooms. For two more years he
worked at the second chamber, suffering this time an interruption
in the plan of his decorations to meet the taste of the new Pope,
and then he and his assistants spent two more in decorating the
room on the other side of the Segnatura. There remained to be
completed the largest room of all and the colonnaded loggia
without. The latter Raphael designed and decorated in the
later years of his life; the former he began to have painted in
a new medium of oil, when death carried him off.
The Vatican stanze and loggia did not of course occupy the
whole of his energies. Internal evidence would place certain of
his pictures of the Madonna during the period of the painting of
the Segnatura chamber, but no external evidence corroborates it.
In any case, the patrons for whom the works were executed
remain unknown. The subjects of the frescoes suggest that as
soon as he came to Rome he fell into the society of learned men,
poets and writers with whom Urbino had already brought him
3 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ii. pp. 12 and 13. Among others Lotto, Sodoma and
Bramantino are mentioned.
2 For this explanation of the name see Klaczko, Jules II., p. 215.
92
painters who may be these, tell of men whose work is other-
wise unknown, or whose work at Rome had otherwise escaped
record.1 The decorations as they stand at present show portions
which are clearly not Raphael’s work, and can be attributed with
much show of reason to Perugino, Sodoma and Baldassare Peruzzi,
but whether they are the only remains which were spared in a
general destruction or the fragments of incomplete undertakings
cannot be decided. In any case they show, and the disposition of
Raphael’s own decorations shows more clearly, the gradual nature
of his task. For three years he worked steadily, and perhaps
alone, at the decoration of the first room, which was set apart to
be the meeting-place of the Papal Court called the Segnatura,2
leaving the chamber through which it was approached on either
side untouched and adding nothing, changing nothing, in the
architectural framework of the rooms. For two more years he
worked at the second chamber, suffering this time an interruption
in the plan of his decorations to meet the taste of the new Pope,
and then he and his assistants spent two more in decorating the
room on the other side of the Segnatura. There remained to be
completed the largest room of all and the colonnaded loggia
without. The latter Raphael designed and decorated in the
later years of his life; the former he began to have painted in
a new medium of oil, when death carried him off.
The Vatican stanze and loggia did not of course occupy the
whole of his energies. Internal evidence would place certain of
his pictures of the Madonna during the period of the painting of
the Segnatura chamber, but no external evidence corroborates it.
In any case, the patrons for whom the works were executed
remain unknown. The subjects of the frescoes suggest that as
soon as he came to Rome he fell into the society of learned men,
poets and writers with whom Urbino had already brought him
3 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ii. pp. 12 and 13. Among others Lotto, Sodoma and
Bramantino are mentioned.
2 For this explanation of the name see Klaczko, Jules II., p. 215.
92