DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61022#0221
PORTRAITS
with no touch of delicate painting save in the right arm and hand,
and in certain passages of the breast and abdomen. Nothing
could be less plausibly attributed to Raphael. Yet as the whole
picture remains unexplained and entirely foreign to our taste, it is
impossible either to reject it as his or to assign it to any other
painter. It always remains possible that he painted it in some
mood or as some experiment which has failed to make itself clear
in the painting, and until the cause of the strange phenomenon has
been explained it must remain as an isolated anomaly. Certainly
the attribution to Giulio Romano—facilis descensus of every writer
upon Raphael—is not convincing, at any rate not if the somewhat
similar picture in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, which was
also once given to Raphael is his, as the complete resemblance to
his other work would suggest. But it is quite possible that the
whole mystery of the picture is due to no other cause than to the
inferiority of the painter, and he may have been one of those
converters of well-known portraits into nude figures who were
responsible for the repeated versions of the ‘ Mona Lisa ’ as a
leering courtesan, undraped. In that case the prototype of both
this and the ‘Donna Velata,’—for the two pictures are connected
not only by the attitude of head, shoulders, and arms, but even
by so significant a detail as the hanging jewel in the hair,—must
be sought for in vain among the pictures that are now lost.
The attribution to Raphael of the many other portraits which
exist under his name, or their definite rejection, depends entirely
upon the general conception which each critic forms as to his
character and development as a painter. Such heads as that of
the 4 Violin Player’ (Plate cxlvi.) in the collection of Baron von
Rothschild, or the traditional ‘Fornarina’ of the Uffizi are now
confidently dismissed from the catalogue of Raphael’s works and
assigned to Venetian painters, preferably Sebastiano del Piombo.
But the general voice of tradition which persists in assigning to
Raphael portraits of a Venetian character is not to be disregarded
so lightly, and if once a slight alteration in the current view of
199
with no touch of delicate painting save in the right arm and hand,
and in certain passages of the breast and abdomen. Nothing
could be less plausibly attributed to Raphael. Yet as the whole
picture remains unexplained and entirely foreign to our taste, it is
impossible either to reject it as his or to assign it to any other
painter. It always remains possible that he painted it in some
mood or as some experiment which has failed to make itself clear
in the painting, and until the cause of the strange phenomenon has
been explained it must remain as an isolated anomaly. Certainly
the attribution to Giulio Romano—facilis descensus of every writer
upon Raphael—is not convincing, at any rate not if the somewhat
similar picture in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, which was
also once given to Raphael is his, as the complete resemblance to
his other work would suggest. But it is quite possible that the
whole mystery of the picture is due to no other cause than to the
inferiority of the painter, and he may have been one of those
converters of well-known portraits into nude figures who were
responsible for the repeated versions of the ‘ Mona Lisa ’ as a
leering courtesan, undraped. In that case the prototype of both
this and the ‘Donna Velata,’—for the two pictures are connected
not only by the attitude of head, shoulders, and arms, but even
by so significant a detail as the hanging jewel in the hair,—must
be sought for in vain among the pictures that are now lost.
The attribution to Raphael of the many other portraits which
exist under his name, or their definite rejection, depends entirely
upon the general conception which each critic forms as to his
character and development as a painter. Such heads as that of
the 4 Violin Player’ (Plate cxlvi.) in the collection of Baron von
Rothschild, or the traditional ‘Fornarina’ of the Uffizi are now
confidently dismissed from the catalogue of Raphael’s works and
assigned to Venetian painters, preferably Sebastiano del Piombo.
But the general voice of tradition which persists in assigning to
Raphael portraits of a Venetian character is not to be disregarded
so lightly, and if once a slight alteration in the current view of
199