DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61022#0214
ROMAN ART
Apparently without the least consciousness of the magnitude
of the task before him, Raphael attacked his subject with perfect
simplicity. He makes no effort to reduce his sitter to any formula
of portrait painting, nor seeks among his many moods for an
expression which is striking and characteristic. He sets forth
to paint the whole man, as others see him, even, perhaps, as he
sees himself. The excellence of the picture as a portrait is
attested not only by Bembo’s words—they indeed state that
the lost portrait of Tebaldeo far excelled this—but also by
Castiglione’s own epigram1 upon the picture. Naturally, therefore,
he portrays his sitter in a moment of complete external repose,
when all the moods and characteristics of the sitter are in
potentiality or subdued activity. All action in art is a limitation
of character, because to make a moment permanent is to give
it over-emphasis, and no motion of so complex a being as man
can be an action of the whole. The eyes are wide open and
pensive, the lips are closed in a slight smile ; no words are passing,
and the thought that is at work behind the eyes is indeterminate.
These were the characteristics of the Virgin’s head in the 4 Sistine
Madonna,’ for, there as here, Raphael was searching for an
expression which might be complete, and giving to the ideal
head of the woman the same universality as he finds here in
the features of his friend.
To appreciate the exact quality of the brownish skin, the
brilliant blue of the eyes, and the tender modelling of face and
hair and feature (note especially the oblique setting of the
eye), it is necessary to study the picture itself. But, in general,
the pictorial qualities which belong to the portrait are those which
correspond most closely to its intellectual conception. This is
everywhere the case with Raphael, and it is the secret of his
paramount position among painters, but it can nowhere be so
easily observed as in this portrait, because nowhere else is the
field at once so limited and so familiar. The broad, simple colour
1 Passavant, ii. p. 154, from the works of Fulvia Morata. Venice, 1534.
192
Apparently without the least consciousness of the magnitude
of the task before him, Raphael attacked his subject with perfect
simplicity. He makes no effort to reduce his sitter to any formula
of portrait painting, nor seeks among his many moods for an
expression which is striking and characteristic. He sets forth
to paint the whole man, as others see him, even, perhaps, as he
sees himself. The excellence of the picture as a portrait is
attested not only by Bembo’s words—they indeed state that
the lost portrait of Tebaldeo far excelled this—but also by
Castiglione’s own epigram1 upon the picture. Naturally, therefore,
he portrays his sitter in a moment of complete external repose,
when all the moods and characteristics of the sitter are in
potentiality or subdued activity. All action in art is a limitation
of character, because to make a moment permanent is to give
it over-emphasis, and no motion of so complex a being as man
can be an action of the whole. The eyes are wide open and
pensive, the lips are closed in a slight smile ; no words are passing,
and the thought that is at work behind the eyes is indeterminate.
These were the characteristics of the Virgin’s head in the 4 Sistine
Madonna,’ for, there as here, Raphael was searching for an
expression which might be complete, and giving to the ideal
head of the woman the same universality as he finds here in
the features of his friend.
To appreciate the exact quality of the brownish skin, the
brilliant blue of the eyes, and the tender modelling of face and
hair and feature (note especially the oblique setting of the
eye), it is necessary to study the picture itself. But, in general,
the pictorial qualities which belong to the portrait are those which
correspond most closely to its intellectual conception. This is
everywhere the case with Raphael, and it is the secret of his
paramount position among painters, but it can nowhere be so
easily observed as in this portrait, because nowhere else is the
field at once so limited and so familiar. The broad, simple colour
1 Passavant, ii. p. 154, from the works of Fulvia Morata. Venice, 1534.
192