DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61022#0198
ROMAN ART
real landscape, and the incident of the chief group is made familiar
and human. The Madonna stands with the two boys, who are
older than is customary, in an attitude of complete unconscious-
ness, and the figure of St. Joseph disappears with his burden on
his back, like that of any peasant farmer of the hills. So much
more is seen and heard of the grandiose and majestic character of
Raphael’s Roman Madonnas that this half romantic and half
realistic picture, with its unaffected combination of landscape and
figure, must be made much of as a necessary corrective to a
current opinion. If it owes its existence entirely to Raphael’s
pupils the tendency which it displays is still more characteristic,
for they did not reap seed which the master did not sow. But the
whole conception of the picture is the same as that of the groups
in interiors, and of such portrait pictures as those in the Camera
dell’ Eliodoro, for it consists entirely in an effort to give full visual
reality to themes which had always their naturalistic basis, but
had hitherto failed to approximate to the character of the forms
represented.
The ‘ Madonna of the Fish ’ in the Prado (Plate cxxx.) is an
attempt to combine this realistic conception of holy subjects with
its very antithesis, the hieratic presentation of the Virgin enthroned
among attendant saints. As the purely picturesque treatment of
the ‘ Passeggio ’ became common in Venetian painting, so this
manner of representation became fashionable in Florence. Some
necessity of religious observance, totally inartistic in its character,
gave Raphael the theme. He attempts to connect the young
Tobias and the Archangel who guides him with the Virgin and
the Infant, but St. Jerome and his lion remain as they would have
been in any early picture. The result is frigid, and the animation
of the various characters becomes uneasiness. The picture seems
hurried and ill thought out, and only certain of its details have
beauty when taken by themselves. The chief of these is the
Virgin herself. Her figure provides an illuminating contrast with
another Madonna of this circle, that ‘of the Candelabri’ in the
176
real landscape, and the incident of the chief group is made familiar
and human. The Madonna stands with the two boys, who are
older than is customary, in an attitude of complete unconscious-
ness, and the figure of St. Joseph disappears with his burden on
his back, like that of any peasant farmer of the hills. So much
more is seen and heard of the grandiose and majestic character of
Raphael’s Roman Madonnas that this half romantic and half
realistic picture, with its unaffected combination of landscape and
figure, must be made much of as a necessary corrective to a
current opinion. If it owes its existence entirely to Raphael’s
pupils the tendency which it displays is still more characteristic,
for they did not reap seed which the master did not sow. But the
whole conception of the picture is the same as that of the groups
in interiors, and of such portrait pictures as those in the Camera
dell’ Eliodoro, for it consists entirely in an effort to give full visual
reality to themes which had always their naturalistic basis, but
had hitherto failed to approximate to the character of the forms
represented.
The ‘ Madonna of the Fish ’ in the Prado (Plate cxxx.) is an
attempt to combine this realistic conception of holy subjects with
its very antithesis, the hieratic presentation of the Virgin enthroned
among attendant saints. As the purely picturesque treatment of
the ‘ Passeggio ’ became common in Venetian painting, so this
manner of representation became fashionable in Florence. Some
necessity of religious observance, totally inartistic in its character,
gave Raphael the theme. He attempts to connect the young
Tobias and the Archangel who guides him with the Virgin and
the Infant, but St. Jerome and his lion remain as they would have
been in any early picture. The result is frigid, and the animation
of the various characters becomes uneasiness. The picture seems
hurried and ill thought out, and only certain of its details have
beauty when taken by themselves. The chief of these is the
Virgin herself. Her figure provides an illuminating contrast with
another Madonna of this circle, that ‘of the Candelabri’ in the
176