DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61022#0188
ROMAN ART
upon the decoration of the fourth room of the Stanze for which
Raphael was preparing at the time of his death, although it is
probable that no part of the actual fresco was begun during his
lifetime.1 It is the largest of the rooms and the only one which
offered a great opportunity to the decorator. In its scheme
Raphael advanced still further in the direction of imitative decora-
tion, which, in common with Michelangelo, he had essayed in
the fourth wall of the Stanza della Segnatura and in the
ceiling of the Stanza dell’ Eliodoro. Unwilling now to utilise
a whole wall as a frame for a picture with an atmosphere of
its own, he placed large statuesque figures of the 4 Virtues ’ on
each wall, and between them he had planned to place great
painted tapestries. Within this field the picture was painted, and
thus both the effect of the picture and the illusion of real archi-
tectural decoration were maintained. Of the four pictures only
one has any claim to derive from Raphael’s mind. It is the
huge 4 Battle of Constantine against Maxentius ’ (Plate cxvi.), an
enlarged version of the 4 Attila ’ in the next room, and like it
also, probably, in being akin to Leonardo’s picture of the 4 Battle
of Anghiari.’ The failure of the picture to attract the taste of
this day suggests that Leonardo is happy in the destruction of
a masterpiece which men would no longer accept. For though
the touch of the pupils’ hands has led to exaggeration in the
drawing, and some failure of the colour, or the unhappy desire
to reproduce an effect of tapestry, has made the whole picture a
rusty brown confusion; the immensity of the visual imagination,
the vigour of the action and the variety of the forms, the whole
conception of turmoil and violence cause the picture to deserve
much more of the admiration which formerly it received than the
discredit into which it has now fallen. Men now require in the
representation of these scenes either naive suggestions of their
features without reproduction of any of their general visual char-
acter such as mark the battle pictures of Uccello or Piero della
1 See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ii. 450 ; Springer, ii. 184.
166
upon the decoration of the fourth room of the Stanze for which
Raphael was preparing at the time of his death, although it is
probable that no part of the actual fresco was begun during his
lifetime.1 It is the largest of the rooms and the only one which
offered a great opportunity to the decorator. In its scheme
Raphael advanced still further in the direction of imitative decora-
tion, which, in common with Michelangelo, he had essayed in
the fourth wall of the Stanza della Segnatura and in the
ceiling of the Stanza dell’ Eliodoro. Unwilling now to utilise
a whole wall as a frame for a picture with an atmosphere of
its own, he placed large statuesque figures of the 4 Virtues ’ on
each wall, and between them he had planned to place great
painted tapestries. Within this field the picture was painted, and
thus both the effect of the picture and the illusion of real archi-
tectural decoration were maintained. Of the four pictures only
one has any claim to derive from Raphael’s mind. It is the
huge 4 Battle of Constantine against Maxentius ’ (Plate cxvi.), an
enlarged version of the 4 Attila ’ in the next room, and like it
also, probably, in being akin to Leonardo’s picture of the 4 Battle
of Anghiari.’ The failure of the picture to attract the taste of
this day suggests that Leonardo is happy in the destruction of
a masterpiece which men would no longer accept. For though
the touch of the pupils’ hands has led to exaggeration in the
drawing, and some failure of the colour, or the unhappy desire
to reproduce an effect of tapestry, has made the whole picture a
rusty brown confusion; the immensity of the visual imagination,
the vigour of the action and the variety of the forms, the whole
conception of turmoil and violence cause the picture to deserve
much more of the admiration which formerly it received than the
discredit into which it has now fallen. Men now require in the
representation of these scenes either naive suggestions of their
features without reproduction of any of their general visual char-
acter such as mark the battle pictures of Uccello or Piero della
1 See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ii. 450 ; Springer, ii. 184.
166