Michelangelo Buonarroti was not simply the greatest artist of the Italian Renaissance, but the artist who synthesized and transcended the achievements of his predecessors, transforming Renaissance ideals into works of unprecedented power, realism, and spiritual intensity. Michelangelo absorbed the innovations of artists such as Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello, Paolo Uccello, Verrocchio, and Leonardo da Vinci before elevating the human figure, especially the nude, to its highest artistic expression.
Michelangelo Buonarotti, Madonna della Scala, 1490. Casa Buonarroti, Florence, Italy. Though it is small-sized the relief subject of the Madonna and child presents a monumental scope. The female figure fills the entire space. The meaning of the ladder (“scala”) in the title is ambiguous and may have reference to the children playing and holding a drape behind the Madonna. The date of the relief has been much discussed. However, a placement around 1490, before the Battle of the Centaurs, seems to be confirmed. see – https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/madonna-della-scala/xQF2nwLhAXd26w?hl=it – retrieved March 6, 2025.
Michelangelo Buonarotti, Nude female, 1533, Casa Buonarroti, Florence, Italy. This figure of a female nude is linked to the New Sacristy in Florence to accompany the marble effigy of Giuliano de’ Medici. It has been linked to the figure of the Earth that, together with the Sky, was to be part of Giuliano’s marble effigy. The project of building a proper Medici family mausoleum was conceived in 1520, when Michelangelo began work on the New Sacristy upon the request of Cardinal Giulio de Medici, the future Pope Clement VII, who expressed a desire to erect the mausoleum for some members of his family including Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano assassinated in Florence’s Duomo in 1478. After completing the architectural works in 1524, Michelangelo worked until 1533 on the sculptures and the sarcophagi that were to be featured on the chapel walls. The only ones actually completed were the statues of Lorenzo, the Duke of Urbino; Giuliano, the Duke of Nemours; the four statues of the allegories of Day and Night, and Dawn and Dusk; and the group representing the Madonna and Child. see – https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/nudo-femminile/xgHfNWIKU6r13g?hl=it – retrieved March 6, 2025 and http://www.museumsinflorence.com/musei/Medici_chapels.html#:~:text=The%20project%20of%20building%20a,the%20Magnificent%20and%20his%20brother – retrieved March 6, 2025.
Michelangelo, crucifix, 1493, wood, Santo Spirito, Florence. It was placed by the artist in 1493 above the lunette of the high altar and has been there since.
The Italian Renaissance artist was born in Florentine territory in Caprese in the provinces of Tuscany where his father was a government bureaucrat. The family soon relocated to Florence where Michaelangelo grew up. Becoming friends with Francesco Granacci (1469-1543) who saw Michaelangelo’s drawing talent, at 13 years old Michelangelo announced he wanted to be an artist. Despite his parents objection, they eventually yielded to their son’s aspirations, and he was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448-1494) for the next three years.
Raised in Florence, Michelangelo trained under Domenico Ghirlandaio and was later influenced by the artistic environment fostered by Lorenzo de’ Medici.
Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448-1494), Expulsion of Joachim From the Temple, fresco (detail), 1486-1490. Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Tornabuoni, Florence. In the background, the mitered high priest receives sacrificial lambs at the altar where a fire burns. Joachim, according to sacred tradition, father of the Virgin Mary and grandfather of Jesus Christ, is sent away at this time since he is childless. He is married to Anne. To the right Ghirlandaio depicts an assembled group of contemporary Florentines including, second from right, Ghirlandaio himself. In 2nd century apocryphal writings, childless Joachim left for the desert where he prayed and fasted for 40 days. Angels appeared to Joachim and his wife Anne, and promised them a child. Joachim then returned to Jerusalem and embraced Anne at the city gate, a scene popularly depicted in medieval and Renaissance art. After this, Anne became pregnant and became the mother of the Virgin Mary and Jesus’s grandmother. This apocryphal relating of Joachim and Anne to Biblical figures Elizabeth and Zechariah and the birth of their son, John the Baptist (Luke 1) and Abraham and Sarah and the birth of their son, Isaac (Genesis 21) was a popular subject depicted in Christian art until the Council of Trent (1545–1563) when the church restricted public displays of these simple stories and events from apocryphal sources in a severe reaction to the Protestant reformation.
Michelangelo’s training was erratic, likely having left Ghirlandaio before his contract was complete, and working under the city’s ruler, Lorenzo de Medici for his contracted master, Bertoldo (1420-1491). Later in life Michelangelo did not advertise his training credentials as he believed art – such as freeing subjects from stone – emerged by the sheer artistic power of the individual. In this period, as a teenager, Michelangelo learned the art of fresco painting and drawing, copying previous masters such as Giotto (1267-1337) and Masaccio (1401-1428). Michelangelo absorbed the artwork of the naturalists, such as Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), whose artwork looked to present subjects with a viewpoint like a scientist interested in objective fact rather than looking to convey some established figural attitude. Where young Michelangelo was materially as great as Giotto and Masaccio, he also possessed a new means undreamt by those previous masters, as he drunk of the art of Donatello (1386-1466), Pollaiuolo (1429-1498), Verrocchio (c.1435-1488) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Further, Michelangelo understood better than these others, that the epitome of these Renaissance artistic studies was to be expressed by one subject above all: the human nude.
Michelangelo believed artistic greatness derived from the artist’s own creative power and became especially devoted to expressing the human form, particularly the nude, as the pinnacle of artistic achievement.
Giotto, The Arrest of Christ (Kiss of Judas ), 1304, Padua, Scrovegni Chapel.
The Arena, or Scrovegni Chapel, was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni in 1303. A nobleman of Padua, Enrico dedicated the chapel as an act of atonement for the sins of his father, Reginaldo, a moneylender whom Dante placed among the damned in the Inferno. The exterior of the chapel is austere, but its interior is filled with Giotto’s frescoes, completed by the time of the chapel’s dedication in late March 1305, with remaining work finished by March 1306. By this point, Giotto—then in his late thirties—was already a mature master, and in this cycle he transformed the course of Italian painting.
What had appeared as youthful brittleness and restlessness in his frescoes at Assisi in the late 1290s—works that had secured his fame and led to the Padua commission—has here developed into a fully realized visual language of narrative concision, solemnity, and decisive, almost fatalistic, plastic form. Although the subjects of the Life of the Virgin, the Life and Passion of Christ, and the Last Judgment draw upon a venerable medieval tradition, Giotto renders them with a striking immediacy. Human emotion, individualized gesture, and the presence of everyday life infuse the sacred narratives with a naturalism that conveys profound dignity and emotional gravity rather than rhetorical flourish.
Bernard Berenson described Michelangelo as “the pupil of nobody, the heir of everybody, who felt profoundly and powerfully what to his precursors had been vague instinct, who saw and expressed the meaning of it all.”
The dramatic center of the Betrayal fresco is the confrontation between Christ and Judas. Once Christ accepts His fate in the agony of the garden, the world wastes no time in presenting Him with the cross He has embraced. One of His own apostles—an unsettling reminder of the failures of religious leaders across the ages—betrays Him with a kiss. Christ’s body nearly disappears beneath Judas’s enveloping cloak, yet His classical profile remains visible, fixed in a calm, penetrating gaze upon His betrayer. Judas’s pursed lips embody the chilling intimacy of treachery. As John 13 recounts, the devil—whether through possession or the alignment of Judas’s will with Satan’s designs—provides the impetus for the betrayal.
Giotto had previously depicted Judas as youthful and handsome, but here the apostle’s features bear the accumulated marks of moral decay. At the left, Peter lashes out at Malchus, the high priest’s servant, severing his ear; at the right, the high priest himself gestures toward the betrayal, yet his posture suggests a momentary hesitation before the full enormity of the act. Through these figures, Giotto constructs a scene of moral and emotional complexity, capturing the decisive moment when divine purpose and fallen humanity collide.
Paolo Uccello, Sacrifice of Noah And Noah’s Drunkenness (detail), 1447-48. Uccello was not interested primarily in conveying in art the possible “artistic” intention of this story’s scene. Instead, as Bernard Berenson described it, the artist produced “nothing but the scientific intention to find out how a man swooping down head-foremost would have looked if at a given instant of his fall he had been suddenly congealed and suspended in space.” These studies of reproducing objects as they really are, in anatomy and perspective, had a great bearing for the art of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. quoted in Berenson, p.54.
Masaccio, Distribution of Alms and Death of Ananias (detail), 1425-1427, Brancacci Chapel, Florence. An episode from Acts of the Apostles (4:43-37 and 5: 1-11) depicting Ananias’s wife and child whose husband withheld their tithe from the early church leaders with the outcome being that Ananias dropped dead in divine retribution. When it was painted, viewers in the 1420’s and afterwards, read it as an artistic display of a New Testament endorsement of the equitable redistribution of wealth and the divine punishment of death forthwith for those who falsely withheld their fair share. 67% 7.95mb
When the Medici fell and Florence became a theocracy under Savonarola (1452-1498), 19-year-old Michelangelo decided to leave Florence. He lamented the fall of Lorenzo the Magnificent, his artistic patron, and the young artist lived hand to mouth going to Bologna, then to Venice, and back to Bologna, and finally to Rome in June 1496. The popes’ tremendous influence in capitalist Italy started in the 13th century and augmented into the 17th century, leading to what art critic Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) called an encroachment of “soulless Vaticanism” towards modern art. But clearly Rome had no use for a firebrand friar who refused to support the pope’s troops against the invading French army. As Columbus set out to discover America, It was the unpleasant chapter of the Italian War of the 1490s that helped fill the times with ongoing brutality, duplicity, complicity, intrigue, opportunism and expedience. A looming danger of looting and violence of the invading French army were emphasized by the impassioned sermons of Girolamo Savonarola that frightened the people and led to their heightened resentment against the ruling Medici. Florence was traditionally pro-French, but Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici (“Piero the Unfortunate”) (1472-1504), son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, had deployed against them to defend Naples. Under pressure from citizens and outside French forces promising church reforms and civic transparency, the Medici was forced to flee and the city was proclaimed a Republic. The Florentines, with Savonarola in the lead, facilitated the invasion of French king Charles VIII (1470-1498) and against the pope which they considered corrupt. Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503), a Borgia and one of the most corrupt popes in history, ascended to the papal throne in 1492 and was immediately condemned in fiery sermons by Savonarola. Yet all was not well between “liberator” Charles VIII and his Florentine supporters. Immediately the French king demanded a huge sum of money, a ransom payment of sorts, from the Florentines in appreciation, as well as to pay for, the pro-French liberation. The Florentine government refused and the king threatened to loot the city. Faced with a backlash and real threat of popular revolt, the French bully relented and continued onto Rome. Charles postured, but was constantly fearful of antagonizing the European powers and announced his decision that he would not depose the corrupt old pope after all. By having kidnapped the pope’s mistress Giulia Farnese, wife of the pope’s military ally Orsino Orsini, who commanded 4,000 Neapolitan soldiers freshly landed to defend papal interests on the peninsula, Charles VIII was able to extract full entry into Rome in exchange for her release. Once in Rome the French troops looted the city. The pope, in a panic, arranged a quick safe passage for Charles VIII out of the Papal States towards Naples during which the king’s army massacred many hundreds of local inhabitants.
Charles VIII, roi de France, anonymous, c. 1550. Entering Florence in a power vacuum the invading French king demanded a huge sum of money from the citizens who refused to pay and leading to a stand-off. Public Domain.
Domenico Ghirlandaio’s 15th century portrait of Piero the Unfortunate. Eldest son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medicisucceeded him as ruler of Florence in 1492. When Piero determined in 1494 to stay neutral during French king Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy, effectively defending Naples the object of the king’s campaign, he was challenged. Suffering from an abandonment of the Florentine elite under the spell of Savonarola, Piero totally capitulated to Charles VIIi’s demands. Having succeeded in alienatating everyone in Florence, Piero fled to Venice, aided by a French diplomat, in November 1494. Attempting to make a comeback several times to Florence he was constantly rebuked, Piero drowned in the Garigliano River while attempting to flee the aftermath of the Battle of Garigliano in 1503, Public Domain.
Pope Alexander VI Borgia, c.1495, attributed to Spanish painter Pedro Berruguete (c. 1450-1504), Vatican Museums. Alexander Vi was a wily politician from a prominent family who practiced nepotism and sired several children by way of his many mistresses.
Savonarola played an important role in this French infiltration in Italy — and Rome did not forget. Then, in February 1497, during Mardi Gras of that year, Savonarola, whose message was a combination of religious purist and civic republican preached his most dramatic act of cultural desecration by seeking that artworks, books, clothing items and cosmetics were thrown into a bonfire of the vanities as a sign of monied and other social decadence. The flames became his final undoing: Savonarola was excommunicated for heresy and sedition by Pope Alexander VI on May 12, 1497 after the preacher called “the contemporary Church leadership…a pockmarked whore sitting on Solomon’s throne.” The pope also threatened Florence with severe interdictions if they continued to be a sanctuary for Savonarola and his ilk. Savonarola was imprisoned on April 7, 1498 after failing a literal public trial by fire (it rained). Finally, he was dragged from his prison cell and with two other contemptible friars was condemned as a heretic and schismatic and hanged and burned at the stake on May 23, 1498, with the Vatican and the Medici observing it all from a safe distance. Yet the cult of Savonarola, his person as well as his political and religious ideas, did not go quietly up in smoke. Though seen today as a sort of vile figure, his supporters around 1500 and afterwards saw him as a martyr and encouraged his veneration as a saint to which many complied. In Florence Savonarola’s disputed legacy went on until the Medici more or less permanently re-installed themselves in 1530. Yet Protestant reformers in Germany and Switzerland were intrigued and influenced by Savonarola’s ideas and, in 1558, even Pope Paul IV, who was 22 years old when Savonarola was executed, declared him not a heretic and always in communion with the Catholic Church. Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595), a Florentine established in Rome, and regularly characterized as a most relatable prelate of and for the masses, also defended Savonarola’s memory.
Michelangelo’s early career was within the turbulent political and religious upheavals of Florence, including the rise and fall of Girolamo Savonarola.
Francesco Rosselli (1445-1513), The Execution of Savonarola and Two Companions at Piazza della Signoria, 16th century, oil on canvas, Galeria Corsini.
Bernard Berenson as a young man, Berenson described Michelangelo as “the pupil of nobody, the heir of everybody, who felt profoundly and powerfully what to his precursors had been vague instinct, who saw and expressed the meaning of it all.” quoted in Berenson p. 72. Public Domain.
Verrocchio, Equestrian Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, 1480s, Venice. Bartolomeo Colleoni (1400-1475) was an Italian condottiero, who became captain-general of the Republic of Venice. Colleoni gained a reputation as the foremost tactician and disciplinarian of the 15th century. PHOTO: “Bartolomeo Colleoni by Andrea del Verrocchio” by Didier Descouens is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Nude Dancers, 1470s, Fresco Arcetri, Villa La Gallina. A fresco frieze of dancing nude figures, in a villa near Florence, shows the artist’s same interest in extreme body poses. Public Domain.
Meanwhile, in Rome, Michelangelo sculpted his first major marble works. The first, Bacchus, was commissioned by Cardinal Raffaele Riario (1461-1521) in partnership with Jacopo Galli, a Roman collector, that was displayed in Galli’s garden until it was sold in 1572 to the Medici and is today in the Bargello. The second is the sublime Pietà (St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City) that was commissioned by a French cardinal in Rome and placed in the Santa Maria della Febbre. Vasari described the Pietà as “a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture.” Though the Pietà made Michelangelo famous in Rome, he returned to Florence following its installation to work on the David, a commission made by the Florentine republic after the expulsion of the Medici.
Michaelangelo’s early masterpieces, including Bacchus, the Pietà, and David, established his reputation as one of Europe’s greatest sculptors.
Michelangelo, Pietà, marble, 1498-1499, St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. A 24-year-old Michelangelo was all the rage in Rome as an artist in the late 1490’s and wrote his name prominently across the sash of the Blessed Mother. The artist did this after it was completed and heard a group admiring the artwork and attributing it to a different artist. Michelangelo was having none of it and one night whet into the chapel and chiseled his name for none to miss seeing. PHOTO: “Pieta (Michelangelo)” by elixirk is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, Italy, Michelangelo’s David, created in c. 1501-1504, has been in the Galleria dell’Accademia since 1873, The biblical figure of David came to symbolize the defense of civil liberties embodied in the 1494 constitution of the Republic of Florence, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and by the political aspirations of the Medici family.May 1983. Author’s collection.
Michelangelo’s achievement rested on combining Renaissance naturalism, anatomical understanding, classical ideals, and spiritual drama into a unified artistic vision.
Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, 1536-41, Sistine Chapel, Vatican.
The Cosmic Blast of the High Renaissance: Michelangelo’s Last Judgment and the Fracture of Europe
Introduction: A Masterpiece Born of Crisis Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment, painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel between 1536 and 1541, stands as the terminal monument to Renaissance humanism in a unified Europe. It captures the terrifying moment when mortals face the raw justice of the Lord—either attaining eternal bliss or being found profoundly wanting. This monumental fresco was forged in a crucible of profound instability. The traditional religious and political order of Europe was fracturing, a reality mirrored in the turbulent biography of the artist himself and the volatile politics of Rome and Florence.
Decades earlier, in 1498, the execution of the radical friar Girolamo Savonarola had temporarily suppressed the spirit of the Florentine Republic. Yet, when Rome was brutally sacked by imperial troops in 1527, Florence, that normally chafed under Roman authority, seized the papacy’s weakness as an opportunity for renewal, re-establishing its republic. By 1530, however, papal and Medici forces crushed Florentine liberty once again. Michelangelo, a fierce republican and an effective “Never Medici” artist, found himself in an impossible position. He ultimately returned to Rome to work for the papacy, viewing it as the lesser of two political evils.
The commission for the altar wall was initiated by Pope Clement VII, though Michelangelo fought desperately to avoid it, longing instead to finish his decades-long project, the Tomb of Pope Julius II. When Clement died, his successor, Pope Paul III—already an old man at the start of a transformative papacy—commanded the artist to abandon the tomb and begin the fresco. To make room for Michelangelo’s vision, existing masterpieces on the wall were completely destroyed, fundamentally altering the chapel’s visual landscape.
The Architecture of Individuality While earlier medieval and early Renaissance masters like Giotto and Fra Angelico had depicted the Last Judgment with a clear, comforting heavenly hierarchy and orderly rows of the Elect, over a century later Michelangelo elevated the concept to reflect a High Renaissance understanding of radical individuality. It took the master three years of intense conceptualization to finalize the design. Crucially, he developed the principal figures before establishing their exact placement, prioritizing the integrity of the individual soul over the constraints of the composition. Secondary elements like shrouds and skeletal figures were introduced only after the primary figures were locked in place.
At the center of this swirling cosmos stands Christ. He is a dynamic, thunderous figure—striding forward and rising from his seat in a manner that mirrors the physical bursting forth from the tomb at His Resurrection. This is the Risen Christ, whose victory over death makes both resurrection and final judgment conceivable. Yet, even in his power, he displays the wounds in his hands, feet, and side, reminding humanity of the immense cost of eternal life.
Beside him, the Virgin Mary breaks from her traditional role as the active universal Intercessor. She tucks her arms close to her body, turning slightly away as her son takes full, absolute command of the human ledger. While she no longer pleads, some art historians interpret her close proximity to Christ as a sign that cosmic Justice is inherently bound to Mercy.
Pagan Imagery and Copernican Echoes One of the most controversial elements of the fresco was Michelangelo’s depiction of a beardless Christ. To many contemporary critics, this smacked of paganism, as the figure heavily evoked the solar deity Apollo. However, this aesthetic choice may have been a brilliant, prescient nod to contemporary scientific breakthroughs. By 1533, the revolutionary Copernican theory—postulating that the earth revolved around the sun, shattering the old man-centered, geocentric universe—was already circulating within the Vatican intellectual circles, including the pope. Michelangelo painted a brilliant, singular shade of yellow behind Christ’s head, used nowhere else in the fresco, effectively transforming Christ into the Heliocentric Sun of the universe. While the institutional Church would later condemn heliocentrism, the popes and the artist of this era seemed quite fascinated by it.
In the final composition, traditional figures like Saint Michael were eliminated in favor of anonymous angels who blow the trumpets of doom and hold the open books of judgment. Directly above the altar where the Pope and cardinals celebrated Mass, Michelangelo painted the black, fiery caverns of Hell. Here, angels and demons wage an organic, chaotic war over resurrected souls, dragging bodies down or pulling them upward. Some have interpreted the space immediately above the altar as Purgatory—a theological battleground of the era, as Protestants fiercely condemned Purgatory due to the Church’s monetization of the doctrine through its sale of indulgences.
This literal depiction of Hell led to legendary friction. When Biagio da Cesena, the papal Master of Ceremonies, complained bitterly that the fresco’s widespread nudity was better suited for a tavern than a sacred chapel, Michelangelo retaliated by painting Biagio’s face in Hell as Minos, complete with donkey ears and a serpent wrapping around him. When Biagio begged Pope Paul III to intervene, the Pope wittily replied that while his papal authority extended to Heaven and Earth, even Purgatory, he had no power to release anyone from Hell.
The Existential Big Bang Ultimately, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment unfolds like an explosive cosmic Big Bang. Humanity is stripped of all earthly status, titles, and emblems of rank. Kings, bishops, and beggars alike meet the Lord entirely naked, judged solely on a ledger of tension between their selfish earthly cruelties and their altruistic compassion. The entire scene is thrown into terrifying uncertainty, caught in an eternal flux by a force outside themselves.
The destinations of these souls are communicated not by spatial boxes, but through raw human emotion: shock, surprise, ecstatic joy, and absolute horror. Rather than using frames or orderly registers, Michelangelo overlapped and cut off his densely packed figures, creating an organic, swirling motion that leaves the true expansiveness of Heaven and Hell completely unknown.
While the theme of eternal judgment had grown increasingly pessimistic and macabre since the devastation of the Black Death in the 14th century, Michelangelo channeled this pessimism into an exploration of Augustinian theology and existential drama. The absolute pinnacle of this psychological despair is captured in a single, monumental figure: a lone damned man being dragged downward by demons. He does not scream or fight; instead, he covers one eye in a gesture of paralyzing realization. His existential isolation remains far more terrifying than a host of medieval depictions of physical torture in Hell, serving as a permanent witness to the heavy responsibility of human free will.
Four years after the fresco’s unveiling, the Western Church would convene the Council of Trent, embarking on a fifty-year Counter-Reformation effort to preserve institutional Catholicism in the face of Protestant revolution. Europe would remain politically and religiously fractured through centuries of subsequent English, French, and global revolutions – as early as the late 15th century the Church would need to lob onto the explorations to find new converts. Yet on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s swirling cosmos remains forever frozen at the terrifying brink of eternity.
Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment serves as the ultimate, transitional monument of the Renaissance, capturing the psychological terror and theological uncertainty of a fracturing Europe by replacing traditional, orderly religious hierarchies with an explosive, chaotic focus on radical human individuality and personal moral responsibility.
This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
SOURCES:
Berenson, Bernard. The Italian Painters of the Renaissance. New York: Phaidon, 1959.
FEATURE Image: Paris Bordon/e (1500-1571), Fisherman Presenting a Ring to the Doge Gradenigo, 1534, oil on canvas, 370 x 301 cm (145.7 in × 118.5 in), Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.
The Venetian Renaissance was shaped by the wealth, global reach, and humanist culture of the Republic of Venice, whose artists transformed European painting through their mastery of color, light, atmosphere, and poetic invention. From Bellini to Giorgione, Lotto, and Bordone, Venetian painters created a distinctive artistic tradition that reflected both the intellectual ideals and imperial ambitions of one of Renaissance Europe’s most powerful states.
INTRODUCTION TO PART 1.
Venice is one of the great Italian cities for Renaissance art and its wide-ranging influences. Reflecting a city in the sea, its art is characterized by light and color. Its most remarkable artistic production was between 1470 and 1590 – the rise, height, and decline of the Italian Renaissance. Developed into a powerful maritime empire between the 9th and 11th centuries, Venice was an independent city state that rivaled all other Italian maritime empires such as Genoa, Pisa, and Amalfi; and lesser-known Ragusa, Ancona, Gaeta and Noli, and until the fall of the Republic in 1797. From its trade routes Venice inherited and fortified the coloristic tradition of Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean, Islamic countries and the Far East, Ravenna along the Italian coast to the south, and Aquileia near Trieste. Trade routes also included to the Free Cities of the North and its medieval Gothic culture. These activities led to a cosmopolitan culture manifested in Venice’s art and architecture. Around 1500 the Republic also had expanded its territorial holdings to a great extent across Italy, Dalmatia, the Alps, and the Aegean Sea.
The Tuscan Renaissance came to Venice starting around 1430 via Padua, a prestigious university town known for its science and philosophy departments, and part of the Venetian state. Artists such as Giotto (c.1267-1337), Filippo Lippi (c. 1406-1469), Donatello (c. 1386– 1466), Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) and Paolo Uccello (1397-1475) brought essential elements of the Early Florentine Renaissance to Venice. Since 1469 Venice was a publishing center and had been a stop since late medieval times for humanist authors such as Petrarch (1304-1374). As the Mediterranean’s dominant naval force, Venice’s cosmopolitan mercantile culture brought financial and human capital to the lagoon city whose concentration spawned technological innovation. Politically, since Venice was a Republic and not a duchy or bishopric, publications and ideas were unencumbered by censorship present elsewhere. For example, Aldine Press established in 1495 began by printing Greek and Roman classics and later worked with leading humanists such as Desiderius Erasmus (1466 – 1536), Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) and Giovanni Pico (1463-1494). The Aldine Press also produced the first proto-type of today’s lightweight and portable paperbacks. By the 16th century over 250 publishing houses operated in Venice making the city a beacon for humanist writers and artists. (see – https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20190708-the-city-that-launched-the-publishing-industry – retrieved December 15, 2024).
The legacy of Giovanni Bellini provided the foundation for the Venetian Renaissance.
These propitious contacts and developments led to the establishment of Venetian Renaissance art by GIOVANNI BELLINI (c. 1430-1516). From an old family of painters, Bellini established a dialogue between Florentine artistic principles of space and form and its philosophy of the natural world with man at the center with Venetian painterly practice. His major discovery was, beginning in his artwork of the 1490s, the situating of naturalistic color to replace the urbane decorative palette used in medieval painting. He also moved past the older mythological subject matter to a naturalistic presentation of religious themes.
Bellini was joined by Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina (1430-1479) who studied with Piero della Francesca (c. 1416-1492) and introduced the influential geometric design to his compositions that influenced CIMA DA CONEGLIANO (c. 1459 – c. 1517). More isolated in his work – and thereby more important for art practice – was the work of VITTORE CARPACCIO (1465-1526) who introduced his synthesis of strict realism, including a sense of space and proportion. Carpaccio captured not only Venice’s contemporary architecture in the work of classicist Mauro Codussi (1440-1504) and sculptor Pietro Lombardo (1435-1515) but its social activity as well. Following Antonello da Messina and Piero della Francesca, Carpaccio used original and expressive colors. Though Carpaccio’s output faded before 1510, Bellini’s work continued until 1516 and through him formed a continuity of style between the late 1400’s and early 1500’s in Venice.
Giorgione revolutionized painting through poetic landscapes, atmospheric effects, and ambiguous narrative subjects.
In this first period, GIORGIONE (1478–1510), a student of Bellini, was another important figure in exploring color in Venetian art. Though influenced by Bellini, Giorgione was original in his transformation of his teacher’s stoic elite classicism to a grounding in intimacy and humanity. Many of his religious subjects are based on individualized portraits. In his unidealized landscape painting based on the realism of German Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Giorgione replicates feelings produced in nature rather than rigid archeological reconstructions that Bellini, Mantegna and Donatello produced. Giorgione was also imbued in Flemish painting including Gerard David (c.1460-1523) and Hans Memling (c. 1433-1494). When Giorgione died at 32 years old in a pandemic in 1510, he left to others his melancholic contemplation of the natural world as a direction for Venetian painting, particularly TITIAN (1488-1576) who is to be featured in another post.
Titian was part of a family of artists who, in 13th-century and 14th century in Italy, had been civic leaders such as mayors, magistrates, and notaries. In Italian his name is Tiziano Vecellio, but in English the artist is famously known as Titian. Titian became the leading painter in Venice and an influential artist throughout sixteenth-century Italy. In the 15th century, two Vecellio brothers had children who became artists. Titian was the grandson of one of those brothers who was ambassador to Venice where the family had a timber trade. A follower of Giorgione, Titian was more intense and dominating in vision and style than the earlier master including his rich dark hues without drawing. Titian also took advantage of Germanic engraving and painting sources for his art, particularly its compositional realism, dynamism and classical references as manifest in Dürer. Though a perfunctory colorist, PARIS BORDON/E (1500-1571) was another artist who came under the influence of Titian’s imperially theatrical style and made a success of it.
Sebastiano del Piombo carried Venetian colorism to Rome, where he engaged with the artistic world of Michelangelo.
There were other artists who followed Giorgione by way of his subject matter rather than, as Titian had, his color. This included artwork of SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO (1485-1547), particularly his early Venetian work before he departed for Rome in 1511, and JACOPO NEGRETTI, CALLED PALMA IL VECCHIO (c.1480–1528) who eventually fell into Titian’s orbit but painted arcadian subject matter inspired by Giorgione.
Lorenzo Lotto developed some of the most psychologically penetrating portraits of the Renaissance.
Prolific Venetian artist LORENZO LOTTO (c. 1480 – 1556) retained his independence and highly individual style in a prolific career influenced by Bellini’s composition, Antonello da Messina’s color, and Dürer’s realism. Lotto started in Treviso in 1503 and returned to Venice in 1525 via Recanati, Rome (where he worked with Raphael in the Vatican apartments making his drawing pliant and coloring mellow) and Bergamo. Lotto’s output was primarily deeply spiritual religious paintings and portraits which plumbed psychological depth, and were very popular. In Venice Lotto became one of the leading artists with Titian and Il Pordenone (1484-1539), painting altarpieces, devotional scenes, and portraits for wealthy patrons in the city. Lotto left Venice in 1533 to return to the papal states of the Marches where he intermittently returned to Venice. In 1554 Lotto became a lay brother at the Santa Casa in Loreto and died there in 1556.
Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430-1516)Madonna with the Child, 1470-1476, oil on canvas transferred from wood, 20.4 in. x 16.9 in (52 x 43 cm), Museo Correr, Venice.
Giovanni Bellini came from a family of artists and began work in his father, Jacopo’s workshop. The Bellini brothers Giovanni and Gentile (d. 1507) were greatly influenced by their contemporary Andrea Mantegna who married their sister Nicolosia in 1454. The chronology of Bellini’s paintings is challenging to definitively settle upon since he ran a large workshop of pupils and assistants whose production output was signed with his name. Bellini’s pupils and influences extended to great names of Renaissance Venetian painting: Giorgione, Titian, Palma Vecchio, Sebastiano del Piombo and had influence beyond his direct contacts and into the future. Bellini also studied Donatello so to develop his personal style in the 1450’s and 1460’s. This is manifested in this Madonna and child of which there are several which expresses in light and color harmonious formal three-dimensional beauty and human feeling.
Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430-1516), Portrait of Joerg Fugger, 1474, oil on panel, 10.2 in. x 7.8 in., 26 cm x20 cm, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California. https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/detail/M.1969.13.P – retrieved December 17, 2024.
In the mid 1470’s, following a practice popularized by Sicilian Antonello da Messina, Bellini moved from tempura painting to oil. Bellini began to use more rounded figures, also taken from Antonello. He also adapted Piero della Francesca’s perspective system. These artistic elements were evident in Northern European artwork commissioned by Italian families from Rogier Van der Weyden (1399-1464), Hugo Van Der Goes (c.1440-1482), Jan Van Eyck (c. 1385-1441), Petrus Christus (c. 1395-1472), Dieric Bouts (c. 1415-1475) and Hans Memling (c. 1433-1494). Bellini’s oil on panel portrait is the artist’s first. The sitter is of Joerg Fugger, the 21-year-old heir to a wealthy banking family in Germany. Bellini depicts his subject with small blue blossoms in his hair, the sign of a scholar. The portrait is three-quarter length instead of profile and set against a neutral background or, later, with landscape and sky. The portrait informed a coming generation of portraiture and religious images in Italy including Raphael (1483 – 1520), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), and Fra Bartolomeo (1472-1517).
The 1470’s saw Bellini produce his most glorious landscapes including the warm and glowing St. Francis at the Frick. Specific details about this painting’s provenance are speculative. It is presumed to have been painted in the late 1470’s for Venetian patrician Zuan Michiel, and was destined for the monastery of San Francesco del Deserto on a remote Venetian island. By 1525, the painting hung in the palace of Taddeo Contarini in Venice. (further reading- https://www.frick.org/exhibitions/bellini_giorgione – retrieved December 17, 2024.). Francis is shown receiving the stigmata in a natural mystical light surrounded by a variety of animals. Bellini’s setting for this religious event that took place in September 1224 is a valley in the Venetian countryside (it took place in Umbria), with a small hilltop town in the background and Francis standing outside his hermit’s dwelling. Saint Francis is said to have composed his Canticle of Creatures also in late 1224, considered one of the first masterpieces of Italian verse.
“Bellini and Giorgione in the House of Taddeo Contarini” on view until February 4, 2024, reunited for the first time in about four hundred years the Frick’s “St. Francis in Ecstasy” by Giovanni Bellini with Giorgione’s “Three Philosophers,” on rare loan from Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum which hung in the palace of Venetian art collector Taddeo Contarini.Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430-1516), Christ Blessing c. 1500, Tempera, oil, and gold on panel, 23 1/4 x 18 1/2 in. (59 x 47 cm), Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. https://kimbellart.org/collection/ap-196707 – retrieved December 17, 2024.
In Bellini’s long career he depicted Jesus Christ differently over time. In his early years he often depicted the dead Christ in a lonely solitude. Later he added angels, and grief-stricken figures of his mother Mary and the apostle John. Bellini developed to depict Christ as triumphant or beatified in his miraculous apparitions of the Transfiguration, Resurrection and Ascension. In Christ Blessing Bellini animatedly portrays the God-Man sent to bless the world on one hand and holding the shepherd’s rod to guide his flock in the other (it may also be logically seen, though not completely in view, as his staff with the traditional red cross on a white flag atop symbolizing his triumph over death). A devotional image presenting the Resurrected Savior, its vibrant figure is brought close to the picture plane where his level gaze and shadowed arm of blessing informs the viewer of the matter-of-fact reality of the scene in quiet harmonious colors. Yet, at the same time, golden rays of light emanate from the top and sides of his head, making thoroughly evident His Divinity. In the background Bellini depicts prolific rabbits, shepherds tending their flock and three shrouded figures who likely are the three Marys at the tomb on Easter morning. There is also a lighted church bell tower to convey the presence of Christ in his Church.
Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430-1516), Drunkenness of Noah, oil on canvas, c. 1515, 40.5 in. x 61.8 in (103 cm x 157 cm), Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie de Besançon.
In one of Bellini’s last works the master shows how he adapts his work to the developing artistic style after 1510 led by Giorgione and Titian: the composition is fluid and dynamically conceived, with dramatic realism, aqueous colors and excited brushstrokes. Its attribution to Bellini has been accepted by scholars since 1927 though it remains open to debate.
Cima da Conegliano
Cima da Conegliano (c. 1459-c.1518), Virgin and Child in a Landscape, 1496-99, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, oil on panel, 28 x 24 3/4 in. (71.1 x 62.9 cm). https://ncartmuseum.org/object/virgin-and-child-in-a-landscape/ – retrieved December 12, 2024.
Cima was a Venetian artist who admired Bellini’s use of color and Antonello’s style of the Netherlandish masters. In contrast to renewed classicism which appeared in Venice in its art and architecture, Cima attempted a sophisticated art reliant on the study of nature that was prevalent in the provinces. Born in Treviso in about 1459, Cima worked in Vicenza in Mantegna’s circle and then moved to Venice in 1492. He was associated with the school of Alvise Vivarini (1442/1453–1503/1505), though Cima remained linked to the gentle and rustic naturalism of the provinces. His models included Madonnas and religious figures in peaceful landscapes such as this painting of a peasant mother and her child in a landscape that includes behind them a monastery and hilltop fortification. The crystalline colors and fluid drawing indicate Antonello’s influence while its overall placidness is characteristic of Cimi’s artwork.
Vittore Carpaccio
Vittore Carpaccio (1465-1526), Apparition of the Martyrs of the Mount Ararat in the Church of Sant’ Antonio di Castello, c.1513-14, oil on canvas, 47 5/8 x 68 ½ in. (121x 174 cm), Gallerie dell’ Accademia, Venice.
A pupil of Gentile Bellini (Giovanni’s brother), and a follower of Giovanni and Giorgione, his finest work began in 1490. The Legend of Saint Ursula and other pageant-type pictures was early and masterful Italian genre painting. Carpaccio depicted detailed episodes of sacred history and legend using the settings and minutiae of contemporary everyday Venetian society within a formal pictorial schema. This Apparition of the Martyrs of the Mount Ararat in the Church of Sant’ Antonio di Castello is a small canvas that captures the compelling simplicity and authentic emotion of a religious scene that was present in his earlier larger format cycles and series. The painting is of a vision of the prior of St. Anthony monastery kneeling at the altar on the far left. He turns to see the 10,000 martyrs of Mount Ararat he called upon in prayer during a plague that had broken out among the friars. As the martyrs process into the church, they are blessed by St. Peter, the first pope. Carpaccio depicts the interior of a Gothic Church – including an elaborate wooden screen at left and cargo ships suspended from the ceiling – that was demolished in 1807.
Vittore Carpaccio (1465-1526), Preaching of St. Stephen, 1500-1525, oil on canvas, 1.48 x 1.94m, Louvre. In place until the abolition of the brotherhood in 1806; P. Edwards, 1807; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 1808; entered the Louvre by way of exchange, 1812. https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010062650 – retrieved December 19, 2024. detail. detail. detail.
Preaching of Saint Stephen by Vittore Carpaccio was done on the first quarter of the 16th century. It depicts the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, giving a sermon whose actions and words involve its audience as active witnesses. Set within a spacious landscape it reflects an ideal city view, reminiscent to Jerusalem. It is suggested that Carpaccio may have been in Jerusalem as this scene is reminiscent of life in that city and of the Haram-ash-Sharif with the Mosque of Omar.
Carpaccio’s realism in numerous portraits in his ceremonial pictures was influenced by the Flemish masters already popular in Italy in the 1490’s. This bust-length independent portrait of a woman set against a plain dark background is almost an abstract construct of eyes, mouth and hairstyle. Her large head is turned slightly in one direction while her limpid eyes look in the other direction. Her reddish hair is pulled loosely back from her face and, at the crown of her head she wears a yellow net to hold some of it. Her square-neck dress is slate blue edged in black, with a white and gold embroidered front panel. Around her neck she wears a choker of white and black beads.
Giorgione who moved to Venice around 1500 is the transitional figure between Bellini and Titian. Instead of a prevailing late 15th century practice of precise brushstrokes and sculptural composition in his art, Giorgio expressed his subject matter in studied tonal gradations of color and precise analysis of human emotional expression described in gentle brushstrokes. Vasari saw Giorgione’s painting as if having no intermediary between art and life. Painted in the same period as Old Woman (Gallerie dell’ Accademia, Venice), this Portrait of a Man epitomizes what Vasari called the “modern manner” where Giorgione sought to paint “living and natural things.” With its plain dark background and close head crop the man’s carefully observed turning gaze and ambiguous expression is wholly engaging and alive.
Giorgione (1478–1510), The Tempest, c. 1508, oil on canvas, 83 cm × 73 cm (33” × 29”), Gallerie dell’Accademia.
With Leonardo da Vinci, Giorgione is ranked as one of the founders of modern art. He was the first artist in Venice who often painted small artworks in oil of mysterious and evocative subjects for private commissions instead of public church works. The Tempest, originally commissioned by a Venetian noble of the House of Vendramin, is one of those artworks. Known as “a landscape of mood,” it has no discernable subject matter outside of expressing the tension and heat of an approaching storm. Its meaning remains elusive today. Giorgione’s career and personal life are equally mysterious. The artist is known to have shared a studio with Venetian painter Vincenzo Catena (c. 1480-1531) in Venice, worked on the Doges’ palace (though these works are lost) and on frescoes on the exterior of the German Merchants headquarters in Venice where Titian was working as well in a lesser role. Giorgione was an innovator but his known output is small, questionable, and, dying in the plague in 1510 at 32 years old, sometimes completed by others including his pupils, Titian and Sebastiano del Piombo, who were profoundly influenced by him.
Because of Giorgione’s early death in 1510 and other circumstances he did not complete many of his later paintings, making their ultimate identification difficult. That Titian completed many of these works is documented. Once in the collection of the House of Vendramin, this painting is such of jumble of painterly hands it is today attributed to the Circle of Titian though when earlier it was attributed to Giorgione the hand of Titian was apparent particularly in the figure of Christ. Titian was more aggressive in his use of colors –such as browns and grays- than Giorgione’s refined yellows and blues. X-rays reveal another composition – believed to be Giorgione-like- over the ponderous right hand of the angel painted over it.
Sebastiano del Piombo
Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547), Organ Shutters, Four Saints, c. 1507-09, 115.3 in. x 53.9 in., 293 cm x 137 cm Gallerie delle’ Accademia, Venice (formerly in the Church of San Bartolomeo al Rialto).
When the organ shutter doors closed they formed a single image of two martyrs: Saint Batholomeo and Saint Sebastian. These organ shutters for San Bartolomeo al Rialto are the earliest documented works of Sebastiano. Commissioned by the church’s vicar in late 1507, it was completed in 1509.
Detail of above. St. Louis of Toulouse.
St. Louis of Toulouse was a bishop of Toulouse in France consecrated by Boniface VIII in 1297. Because of his princely standing Louis won the episcopal appointment, but as bishop he turned his office and efforts to meeting the material and spiritual needs of the poor in his diocese, feeding the hungry, and ignoring his own material interests. After six months, exhausted by his labors, he abandoned the position of bishop and died at Brignoles of fever, possibly typhoid, at 23 years old. St. Louis of Toulouse is one of the inside panels inside a niche of gray stone and gold mosaic (the other is St. Sebald of Nürnberg) by Sebastiano in his first documented commission.
Venice emerged as a rival to Florence and Rome, developing a distinctly Venetian style rooted in light, sensuality, and the visual splendor of the maritime republic.
Sebastiano Luciani, a pupil of Giorgione who deeply influenced him, was born in Venice in 1485. He didn’t become “del Piombo” until after 1531 when he became Keeper of the Papal Seal (“Il Piombo”). After Giorgione’s death in 1510 del Piombo may have completed some of Giorgione’s work and, in 1511, moved to Rome. Working at Villa Farnesina in Raphael’s circle that included Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536), del Piombo fell out with Raphael and became a devoted follower of Michaelangelo (1475-1564). Both eagerly worked to outperform Raphael, an artistic rival, and Michelangelo lent del Piombo some of his drawings to work from for some of the main figures in the complex composition of The Raising of Lazarus. The gigantic painting was commissioned for Narbonne Cathedral in southern France by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici (1478-1534), later pope Clement VII, who had also commissioned Raphael’s last painting Transfiguration for the same cathedral.
“The Raising of Lazarus” by Sebastiano del Piombo is introduced by curator Matthias Wivel in this talk as part of the series ‘The History of the National Gallery in Six Paintings.’Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547), Portrait of Clement VII, c. 1531, oil on slate, 105.4 × 87.6 cm (41 1/2 × 34 1/2 in.), J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103RJN – retrieved December 18, 2024.
The pope visited the artist’s studio and was pleased with his original three-quarter length portrait seated in a chair positioned diagonally, and ordered this oil copy on slate. The practice originated in Rome around 1500 in an attempt towards immortality in art. However, the material was heavy and would shatter if not handled with care. After 1531 del Piombo painted rather less and turned to making admirable portraits which combined his Venetian training in color and Roman discipline in form.
Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547), Portrait of a Man in Armor, c. 1511-15, oil on canvas, 34 ½ x 26 ¼ in (87.6 x 66.7 cm) Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford.
Sebastiano made this portrait under the influence of Giorgione in terms of its gentle, engaging expression and subtly dramatic “over the shoulder” pose. Until more recently, this painting was attributed to Giorgione and, as it is Sebastiano, it recalls the deep influence Giorgione had on his pupils who imitated him profoundly. It has been postulated that the sitter is the Florentine general Francesco Ferrucci (1489-1530) who fought in the Italian Wars.
Palma Il Vecchio
Jacopo Negretti called Palma il Vecchio (c. 1480-1528), Diana and Callisto, c. 1525/28, oil on canvas, 30 ½ x 48 ¾ in. (77.5 x 124 cm), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie) https://www.khm.at/en/objectdb/detail/1291/?offset=34&lv=list – retrieved December 12, 2024.
Palma Il Vecchio was a Venetian painter who was a pupil of Bellini and influenced by Titian, Giorgione and Lotto. He is chiefly remembered for his paintings of female figures, particularly a blonde Venetian type of ample charm which extended even to paintings of several female saints. The subject of the naked woman located in a natural setting was pioneered by Giorgione and Titian but Palma Il Vecchio progressed the subject to work out the figure in three-dimensions and reliant on the linear curves in and of a complex assembly and interplay of naked female figures. In this painting, Palma il Vecchio adapted the poses of the sculptors of antiquity and drew on Mannerist contemporaries such as Giulio Romano (1499-1546) and Marc Antonio Raimondi (c. 1470/82–c. 1534). The sensuous surface texture typically found in Venetian art has given way to porcelain-like coolness.
Giovanni Cariani
Giovanni Cariani (a. 1490-1547), Portrait of a Man, 1525-30, oil on canvas, 36 1/2 x 36 1/2 in. (92.7 x 92.7 cm), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Little is known about Cariani’s biography though it is speculated he was born in Bergamo in or before 1490. In his gentle, soft shaded subjects and arcadian elements Cariani’s early work is Venetian influenced by Giorgione. The artist was also inspired by Bellini and close to Palma Il Vecchio. He moved to Bergamo before 1520 and mastered portraiture under the influence of Lorenzo Lotto which are the highlight of his career. One of Cariani’s masterpieces is this portrait of a man of letters holding a seal that is possibly imperial or papal. The luminous colors are influenced by Palma Il Vecchio while the psychological insight of the sitter is learned from Lorenzo Lotto. The sitter is believed to possibly be Giovanni Benedetto da Caravaggio, a professor and administrator at the University of Padua.
Lorenzo Lotto
Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480 – 1556), Fra Gregorio Belo of Vincenza, 1547, oil on canvas, 34 3/8 x 28 in (87.3 x 71.1 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436917 – December 18, 2024.
The sitter beats his fist into his chest in penance, lifts an open book of Passion meditations, and is surrounded by a brooding sky and background living scene of Calvary, all of which works for the artist to scrutinize the mental state or inner thoughts of his sitter, here a religious brother in an order of poor hermits. Lotto had studied portraits of Albrecht Dürer, who made two trips to Venice, to learn to convey these deeper psychological states. Lotto’s assertively confessional portraits under his intense handling of light and dourly earthy colors, were astutely new and sometimes rejected by clients.
Lotto, a deeply religious man and one of the most independent of the 16th century Venetian artists, had a highly singular artistic vision with penetrating insight into the human personality. This painting is a mixture of the artist’s realism and idealism. The setting is natural as are the donors who Lotto draws with a Northern European Art sensibility. The Madonna and child are not derived from models, but expressed from an artistic conception of spiritual superiority. Kneeling donors in profile with the Virgin and Child was a motif developed in Venice in the 1490’s by Bellini. From the medieval period forward, donors were frequently portrayed in artworks they commissioned and such was more popular than ever in the early 1500’s.
Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480 – 1556), Madonna and Child with Sts. Jerome and Anthony of Padua, 1521, oil on canvas, 37 1/8 x 30 5/8/ in. (94.3 x 77.8 cm), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
While strongly influenced by Bellini at the start Lotto developed an independent chameleon-like style influenced by a range of contemporary Renaissance artists such as Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), Fra Bartolomeo, Raphael, Corregio (1489-1534), Giorgione, Titian, as well as Germans, Dürer and Hans Holbein the Elder (1460-1524). But Lotto’s well-known character of independence had as much an historical context as a personal one. About Lotto, Bernard Berenson observed that the Venetian painter was “a psychological painter in an age which ended by esteeming little but force and display, a personal painter at a time when personality was getting to be of less account than conformity, evangelical at heart in a country upon which a rigid and soulless Vaticanism was daily strengthening its hold” (quoted in Pignatti, page 66). This painting from the 1520’s is remarkable for its renewed vision of the picture plane, here with an interlocking group of figures filling a shallow foreground like a frieze and a delimited background.
Paris Bordon, or Bordone
Paris Bordon/e (1500-1571), Fisherman Presenting a Ring to the Doge Gradenigo, 1534, oil on canvas, 370 x 301 cm (145.7 in × 118.5 in), Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.
It was painted in Venice for the confraternity of San Marco in 1540. Bartolomeo Gradenigo (1263-1342) was the 53rd Doge of Venice for three years, from 1339 to 1342. He was born in Venice to an ancient noble family and was a rich trader who practiced politics from an early age and lived a life of luxury. The painting depicts a famous legend that occurred in Gradenigo’s reign when a storm was pushed back by the intercession of Venice’s saints. Afterwards the saints gave a humble fisherman the “Ring of the Fisherman” to present to the doge.
Accademia – Doge Bartolomeo Gradenigo by Paris Bordon/e.Paris Bordon/e (1500-1571), Portrait of a Knight in Armor, oil on canvas, 36 x 30 in. (91.4 x 76.2 cm) Frame: 44 3/4 x 38 x 3 1/2 in. (113.7 x 96.5 x 8.9 cm), North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. https://ncartmuseum.org/object/portrait-of-a-man-in-armor/ – retrieved December 13, 2024.
Paris Bordon/e was born in Treviso in 1500 and moved to Venice in 1508. where he was based his entire life until his death in 1571. His training is unknown though apparently in Venice where he listed as an independent painter in 1518. As a young professional he reflected the influence of Giorgione in his sentimental portraits and Titian in his use of bold and fluid colors. In the mid 1520s he took on a figural monumentality reminiscent of Pordenone. In the late 1530s Bordon/e was in France at the court of Francis I making realistic portraits and, in 1540, in Augsburg, where he painted for the wealthy Fuggers. Bordon/e was well known for his subjects’ delineated costumes and detailed intellectual landscapes.
Paris Bordon/e (1500-1571). Gladiator fight, c. 1560, oil on canvas, 218 × 329 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie. https://www.khm.at/en/objectdb/detail/292/?offset=0&lv=list – retrieved December 13, 2024.Paris Bordon/e.Paris Bordon/e.Paris Bordon/e (1500-1571), Portrait of a Young Woman in a Green Coat, c. 1550, oil on canvas, 40 1/8 x 30 ½ in. (102 cm × 77.5 cm), Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie.https://www.khm.at/en/objectdb/detail/288/?offset=11&lv=list – retrieved December 13, 2024.
Bordon/e’s painting is closely related to Titian’s style yet in this female figure expresses with elegance and refinement Bordon/e’s own sophisticated stylistic vision. This may be a portrait of Veronica Franco, a Venetian courtesan who played an outsized role in the social and cultural life of the city in the mid16th century.
FEATURE Image: Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Judith Beheading Holofernes, c. 1598, oil on canvas, 56 ¾ x 76 ¾” 145 x 195cm Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome. https://barberinicorsini.org/opera/giuditta-e-oloferne/ – retrieved October 12, 2024.
Viewed chronologically, Caravaggio’s career reveals the emergence of a radically new artistic vision in which light, shadow, emotion, and everyday reality transformed both religious and secular painting, altering the course of European art around 1600.
Ottavio Leoni (1578-1630), Portrait of Caravaggio, c. 1621/25, red and white chalk on blue paper, 23.4 x 16.3 cm, Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence.
INTRODUCTION.
The chalk portrait above is probably the most faithful likeness of Caravaggio. Born Michelangelo Merisi in 1571, Caravaggio became an influential figure in Italian and European art in and well after his lifetime. He revolutionized painting by his theatrical use of light, dramatic narrative, and the naturalistic physical depiction of everyday people. His depiction of figures in historical narrative using dramatic interplay of light and shadow called chiaroscuro along with its naturalistic composition was further modernized in its scenes’ inclusion of the emotional and psychological human state. These artistic qualities were admired and emulated by many young European artists going forward into the balance of the seventeenth century.
Caravaggio came to Rome around 1592 from Lombardy, where he was influenced by the works of Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo (c.1480-1548), Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480-1557), Romanino (c.1484-1566) and Moretto (c. 1498-1554?). For a while he worked in the workshop of the leading late mannerist Giuseppe Cesari (1568-1640), but soon broke away from the established course in Roman-Florentine artistic mannerism. His completely new approach of intense realism and chiaroscuro — that is, dramatic use of light and darkness to situate a scene – made him the “master of darkness” and completely revolutionized art in Rome around 1600. Along with Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610) and Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio, was one of the progenitors of 17th century painting.
Caravaggio’s Il Fruttaiuolo (“Boy with a Basket of Fruit”) presents a remarkable contrast of the detailed, colorful, and sensuous depiction of fruits of the season and the refined and delicate innocence of an adolescent boy holding its basket. The placid scene of typical everyday life is enhanced by an expressive and careful execution. The model was Caravaggio’s friend, Sicilian painter Mario Minniti, at about 16 years old. According to Giovanni Pietro Bellori (1613-1696) who included Caravaggio in his Lives of the Artists, the artist learned “to paint flowers and fruit so well imitated that everybody came to learn from him how to create the beauty that is so popular today.”
Carlo Maratta (1625-1713), Portrait of Gian Pietro Bellori who was Caravaggio’s most important biographer. Other early biographies of Caravaggio’s life were written by his doctor, Giulio Mancini (1559-1630) and by Giovanni Baglione (1566-1643), a rival artist.
Caravaggio’s Il Bacchino Malato (“The Young Sick Bacchus”), also known as Bacchino malato (“The Sick Bacchus”) or Autoritratto in veste di Bacco (“The Self-Portrait as Bacchus”), is an early self-portrait by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, dated between 1593 and 1594. The artwork dates from Caravaggio’s first years in Rome when he moved to the Eternal City from his native Milan in 1592. The painting was in the collection of Giuseppe Cesari (1568-1640), Caravaggio’s early employer. In 1607 it was confiscated from Cesari by the Pope in exchange for the Italian mannerist’s freedom following an illegal firearms charge. The pope gifted it to his nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577-1633), together with the Boy Peeling Fruit and Boy with a Basket of Fruit (“Il Fruttaiuolo“).
The painting is a realist portrait of a young man displaying the typical attributes of Bacchus, the god of drunkenness. The sitter is turned to the viewer in a three-quarter pose, holding in his hands a bunch green grapes held next to his ailing greenish complexion. The sitter has been identified as the artist since it is documented that he was in the Ospedale della Consolazione in Rome around this time for undefined reasons. This interpretation provides the origin for the artwork’s title.
Giuseppe Cesari, Self-portrait, 1640, Accademia di San Luca. Cesari was Caravaggio’s first employer and in possession of The Young Sick Bacchus that was confiscated by the pope.
Ottavio Leoni, Portrait of Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The sitter was not only the pope’s nephew and a Cardinal in the Catholic Church but the recipient of early Caravaggio paintings by gift. Such a gift was not at random: the cardinal’s growing art collection, including Caravaggio and Bernini, formed the basis of the Villa Borghese in Rome.
According to Giulio Mancini, Caravaggio painted The Fortune-Teller for a proverbial song while staying with Archbishop Fantino Petrignani (1577-1601). By 1620 when Mancini was writing, the painting was owned by Roman art collector and Catholic prelate Alessandro Vittrici (d. 1650). Later (1657) it was in the collection of Catholic Cardinal Camillo Francesco Maria Pamphili (1622-1666) who sent it with Bernini (1598-1680) to Paris as a gift to Louis XIV.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), cardsharps,1594/95, oil on canvas, 37 1/16 x 51 9/16 in. (94.2 x 130.9 cm), Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. https://kimbellart.org/collection/ap-198706 – retrieved October 18, 2024.
Playing the game of primero the player at left is oblivious to a bearded cardsharp who uses his gloved fingers to signal to the other player the content of the cards. The other cheater is reaching for a hidden card from his pants behind his back. Caravaggio’s composition is novel with a naturalistic treatment of the figures whose distinct expressions and gestures convey a realistic and hard drama of being cheated and cheating. This painting was owned and stamped by Cardinal del Monte and in his inventory of 1627 following his death. It had been lost for almost a century when it was discovered in a European private collection and purchased by the Kimbell in 1987.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Martha and Mary Magdalene, c. 1598 Detroit Institute of Arts.
“Caravaggio helped to popularize half-length religious paintings like this, made for private collectors rather than for public church settings. His greatest innovation was in depicting biblical characters as if they belonged to contemporary Roman society, basing them on studio models and dressing them in 17th-century attire, as he does here.” https://www.artic.edu/articles/1071/caravaggio-s-dramatic-life-and-paintings – retrieved October 15, 2024.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Musicians, 1595/96, oil on canvas, 36 ¼ x 46 5/8” (92.1 x 118.4 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435844 – retrieved October 10, 2024.
The Musicians, painted by Caravaggio and now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, was commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte (1549–1627), one of Rome’s most influential patrons of the arts. Conceived as an allegory of music—signaled by the presence of Cupid in the background—it is equally a portrait of contemporary musical practice, featuring individualized sitters. Among them is Caravaggio himself, second from the right, offering one of his rare youthful self-portraits.
During the Counter‑Reformation, the Catholic Church actively promoted a revival of music, and Cardinal del Monte was at the center of this cultural movement. At his residence, the Palazzo Madama, he hosted composers, rehearsals, and experiments in progressive musical forms, especially the emerging solo vocal style that departed from older polyphonic traditions. The Musicians was designed specifically for the Cardinal’s music room, its subject and atmosphere echoing the live performances that took place there.
In keeping with Caravaggio’s modernizing approach, the figures are not idealized classical types but real young men posed in quasi‑antique white robes. The self‑portrait—directly engaging the viewer—shows the artist holding a cornetto, a popular wind instrument of the period. Caravaggio also employs a spatial device familiar in later eighteenth‑century art: the prominently placed violin and open music manuscript in the immediate foreground. These objects project into the viewer’s space, drawing the spectator into the scene as an implied participant.
Ottavio Leoni, Francesco Maria del Monte, 1616.
Born in Venice of a Tuscan aristocratic family, Cardinal del Monte was an important connoisseur of the arts. Four centuries later his fame rests on his early patronage of Caravaggio and an art collection which provides detailed provenance for many important works of the period. Del Monte was the single most influential force in Caravaggio’s life. Between 1595 and 1601, the Catholic cardinal became not only the painter’s primary patron but his intellectual mentor, legal shield, and diplomatic strategist—an alliance that lifted the volatile outsider into the ranks of Rome’s most sought‑after, and most controversial, artistic prodigies. Their bond was complicated by each’s share of eccentricities, intense legal vulnerabilities, and the uneasy overlap between church politics and the city’s street‑level underworld.
As mentioned, the relationship began when Del Monte purchased The Cardsharps from a local dealer and immediately recognized the raw, disruptive talent behind it. He brought Caravaggio into his official residence, the Palazzo Madama, granting him a stipend, room and board, and a dedicated studio. Within those walls, Caravaggio entered a rarefied world. Del Monte—an intimate friend and protector of Galileo —surrounded himself with mathematicians, natural philosophers, and experimenters in optics. Immersed in this court of scientific inquiry, Caravaggio refined the radical, directional lighting that would become his signature, transforming observation into revelation.
Del Monte also understood that private cabinet pictures could only carry an artist so far. Leveraging his position as a Vatican insider, he secured Caravaggio’s first major public commission: the Contarelli Chapel cycle in San Luigi dei Francesi. It was a turning point—Caravaggio’s explosive debut on the public stage and the moment his reputation as a revolutionary painter crystallized.
But the Cardinal’s protection had limits. Caravaggio’s temperament grew increasingly erratic, his nights spent among gamblers, swordsmen, and fugitives. By 1606, after the fatal brawl with Ranuccio Tomassoni, even Del Monte could no longer shield him. Caravaggio fled Rome under threat of execution, bringing to an abrupt end one of the most fertile and consequential artistic partnerships of the Baroque age.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Lute Player, 1595/96, oil on canvas, 37 x 46 7/8” The Hermitage Leningrad.
The Lute Player was owned by Cardinal del Monte. It was sold to Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564-1637), an aristocrat Italian banker, art collector and intellectual, and appeared in his inventory in 1638. Caravaggio’s model for the painting is the same as for The Musicians.
Nicolas Régnier/Niccolò Renieri (1591-1667), Portrait of Vincenzo Giustiniani, c. 1630.
Commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, Caravaggio’s St. Catherine of Alexandria presents the saint in the unmistakable likeness of Fillide Melandroni, a well‑known Roman courtesan who played a decisive role in the painter’s artistic and personal life. Young artists routinely turned to women like Fillide for models—respectable women were simply unavailable for such work—and Caravaggio, more than most, transformed these marginalized figures into icons of startling dignity and psychological depth.
Richly robed and kneeling on a cushion, Catherine occupies the canvas with commanding stillness. She rests one hand on the spiked breaking wheel and gently cradles the sword—emblems of her martyrdom—while the dramatic fall of light isolates her against the darkness in Caravaggio’s signature chiaroscuro. The effect is intimate yet monumental: a saint rendered not as an ethereal ideal but as a living woman whose presence feels immediate, almost breathing qualities which would have an immense impact on European art in the 17th century.
Caravaggio heightens this immediacy with a device that would also echo through seventeenth‑century European painting: the saint’s body and attributes press toward the viewer’s space, collapsing the distance between sacred history and the spectator. It is precisely this fusion of realism, theatrical light, and emotional proximity that made works like St. Catherine so influential across the Baroque world.
Detail of above: the face of St. Catherine of Alexandria (Fillide Melandroni).
Caravaggio’s Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy stands as his earliest known religious composition, and already the hallmarks of his mature style—intimacy, theatrical light, and emotional immediacy—are unmistakable. The subject, Saint Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), the Umbrian mystic famed for his radical poverty and fierce asceticism, often withdrew into solitude for forty‑day fasts, seeking to imitate Christ as literally as Scripture allowed. Medieval tradition holds that, like Christ in the wilderness, Francis was ministered by angels during these periods of spiritual extremity.
Caravaggio seizes on one such moment. In September 1224, on Mount La Verna in central Italy, Francis received the stigmata, the wounds of the crucified Christ—an experience granted to only a handful of saints. Caravaggio renders the episode with striking restraint: the saint collapses into the arms of an angel, his body slack with awe, while shepherds linger in the obscured background, half‑witnesses to a mystery they cannot fully comprehend. A faint trace of the wound appears beneath the rough folds of Francis’s tunic, a subtle but potent sign of the miracle.
The entire scene is carved out of darkness by Caravaggio’s directional light, a technique shaped by the scientific culture surrounding his patrons. Here, the light does not merely illuminate; it consecrates. It isolates Francis and the angel in a suspended moment of revelation, while the world around them recedes into shadow.
Caravaggio painted the work in Rome for Ottavio Costa (1554–1639), a Genoese banker and discerning collector who became one of his most loyal supporters. Centuries later, in 1943, Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy became the first Caravaggio to enter a public collection in the United States, marking a milestone in the American reception of the Baroque master.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Rest on the Flight to Egypt, c, 1595/98, oil on canvas, 51 ¼ x 63” Galleria Doria- Pamphili, Rome.
La fête champêtre is a musical picnic whose tradition originated in Italy. Caravaggio’s composition is lyrical and complicated. As it is in the setting of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt in Matthew’s Gospel, the characters are dressed humbly accompanied by the presence of an angel.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Boy Bitten By A Lizard, 1596/97, oil on cavas, 27 ½ 2 22 3/8”, The National Gallery, London.
Detail of above.
Mancini relates that Caravaggio painted the subject when staying with an old Catholic prelate named Pandolfo Pucci. By the end of his residence Caravaggio nicknamed his temporary benefactor Monsignor Insalata, or “Mister Salad,” for the pittance of solid food he served his artist boarder. The mock heroic painting may be allegorical with the lizard conveying its traditional meaning of lust or death joined to cherries symbolic of love and roses that of sexually transmitted disease — and warning of all three. see – https://www.britannica.com/biography/Caravaggio/First-apprenticeships-in-Rome-Pucci-Cesari-and-Petrigiani – retrieved October 15, 2024.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Bacchus, c. 1597, oil on canvas, 37 3/8 x 33 ½”, Uffizi, Florence.
Detail of above.
Cardinal del Monte commissioned it from Caravaggio for a Medici. Detail of above.
Commissioned by his principal patron, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, Caravaggio’s Bacchus was presented as a diplomatic gift to Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici to mark his son’s wedding—a gesture that secured the painting’s place in the Medici collections for centuries. Today it stands as a cornerstone of early Baroque art, celebrated for its audacious rejection of idealized Renaissance classicism in favor of a startlingly earthbound realism.
Instead of a radiant, godlike deity, Caravaggio gives us a working‑class Roman youth—almost certainly his friend and frequent model Mario Minniti—costumed as the god of wine. Any pretense of antiquity is deliberately dismantled. Bacchus reclines not on a marble couch but on a striped mattress folded to imitate a Roman triclinium. His white “toga” is nothing more than a contemporary bedsheet, loosely draped over his body. The effect is both intimate and unsettling: a classical god rendered as a boy you might meet in the streets of Rome, invited into myth by costume alone.
The lower half of the canvas deepens the painting’s moral tension. Caravaggio arranges a sumptuous still life—apples, grapes, figs, a carafe of wine—but it is also a vanitas. The apples are bruised and worm‑eaten, the grapes overripe, the leaves already curling toward decay. This quiet rot serves as a memento mori, a reminder that youth, beauty, and sensual pleasure are as fleeting as the fruit that embodies them. Caravaggio’s realism becomes a form of philosophy.
Despite its current fame, Bacchus nearly vanished from history. After the fall of the Medici dynasty, the painting was relegated to a dark storage room in the Uffizi reserves—unframed, uncatalogued, and obscured beneath yellowed varnish. It remained forgotten until 1913, when art historians rediscovered and authenticated it as an irreplaceable treasure of the Baroque.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, 1597, oil on stucco, about 9/9”” x 5’11” Villa Ludovisi, Rome. https://villaludovisi.org/ – retrieved October 12, 2024.
The building and grounds of Villa Ludovisi in Rome, and their rich artwork, includes masterpiece frescoes by Guercino (1591-1666) and other leading lights of the 17th century Bolognese school. Caravaggio’s Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto is his only known oil painting on plaster. Cardinal de Monte purchased the villa and took up residence there in 1596. The cardinal sold it to the Ludovisi in 1621. Bellori relates that the subject matter for the fresco of these gods was to express the cardinal’s interest in medicinal chemistry (today’s pharmaceuticals).
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Judith Beheading Holofernes, c. 1598, oil on canvas, 56 ¾ x 76 ¾” 145 x 195cm Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome. https://barberinicorsini.org/opera/giuditta-e-oloferne/ – retrieved October 12, 2024.
Commissioned by Ottavio Costa, one of Caravaggio’s most loyal Roman patrons, the painting passed through several prominent Roman families before entering the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in 1970. Its subject is the famous episode from the Book of Judith, a Biblical tale of courage, seduction, and divine deliverance that had long captured the Christian imagination.
Judith—beautiful, eloquent, and revered in her community—is a widow living in the besieged city of Bethulia, threatened with destruction by the Assyrian general Holofernes. Because he is captivated by her beauty, Judith is granted unusual freedom within the enemy camp. She joins Holofernes at a banquet in his tent, where he drinks himself into oblivion. As the text puts it, “Holofernes, charmed by her, drank a great quantity of wine, more than he had ever drunk on any day since he was born” (Judith 12:20).
Once the attendants withdraw, Judith seizes her moment. The biblical account describes the scene with stark intensity: she stands beside the general’s bed and prays silently for strength, saying: “O Lord, God of all might, in this hour look graciously on the work of my hands for the exaltation of Jerusalem. Now is the time for aiding your heritage and for carrying out my design to shatter the enemies who have risen against us” (Judith 13:4–5). Taking Holofernes’ own sword from the bedpost, she grasps his hair, invokes the God of Israel, and strikes twice, severing his head. She then rolls his body aside and hands the severed head to her maid, who conceals it in a food bag before the two women slip back into the night (Judith 13:4–10).
Caravaggio chooses the exact instant when violence erupts—his first painting to depict action with such visceral, kinetic force. The scene unfolds like a frieze suspended in time: Judith leaning forward with grim resolve, her maid assisting with practiced efficiency, and Holofernes recoiling in shock as the blade bites into his neck. The theatrical light isolates the figures against darkness, heightening the sense of immediacy and moral gravity.
This painting marks a turning point in Caravaggio’s career. With Judith Beheading Holofernes, he demonstrates not only his mastery of chiaroscuro but also his ability to transform a biblical narrative into a moment of raw human drama—one that reverberated across the Baroque world.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini, c. 1603, Private Collection, Firenze. Maffeo Vincenzo Barberini (1568-1644) became the future Pope Urban VIII whose reign began in 1623.
The words of Christ, who is there, have been spoken. But now time is suspended. How will Matthew reply? Christ is calling him. Do I go or not? Do I follow him or not? These paintings are completely dramatic. Caravaggio uses natural light but turns it into an astonishing symbol of divine illumination.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Calling of Saint Matthew, 1599-1600, oil on canvas, 10’7 1/2 “ x 11’ 2” Contarelli Chapel, Church of Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.
Caravaggio’s The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599–1600), a monumental oil on canvas measuring 10’7½” × 11’2” (322 × 340 cm), occupies the left wall of the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. Commissioned as his first major public work when the artist was 28 years old, it quickly became a defining masterpiece of the Baroque—an image that rewired the expectations of religious art for an entire generation.
Caravaggio stages the biblical moment described in Matthew 9:9—Christ summoning the tax collector Levi (Matthew) to discipleship—not in a distant, idealized past but in a dark, contemporary Roman tavern, thick with shadow. The sacred enters the profane unexpectedly.
The composition unfolds in two distinct worlds. Around the counting table sit Matthew and his companions, absorbed in their unseemly gains, dressed in sumptuous late‑16th‑century velvet doublets, feathered hats, and sidearms—figures of worldly wealth and casual corruption. Into this scene step Christ and Saint Peter, barefoot and clothed in rough robes. Their presence feels out of sorts, yet the room shifts around them.
A single, razor‑sharp beam of light—Caravaggio’s signature tenebrism —enters from the upper right, cutting diagonally across the darkness. It travels in parallel to Christ’s extended hand, making the light itself a metaphor for divine grace and spiritual awakening penetrating a den of exploitation and greed. As the light strikes the faces at the table—some oblivious, others looking up startled— it settles fully on Matthew, who points to himself in shock.
In Counter‑Reformation Rome, the message was unmistakable. Caravaggio’s painting declared that the divine could break into the most ordinary, compromised corners of daily life—that salvation could arrive unannounced, even in a backroom thick with schemes of greed. It was a psychological jolt to the city’s viewers, a reminder that grace was not confined to altars or idealized visions but could happen anywhere to anyone, at any moment.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, 1602, oil on canvas, 9’8 1/2 “ x 6’ 2 ½” Contarelli Chapel, Church of Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.
This first version of The Inspiration of St. Matthew by Caravaggio was rejected because the evangelist was considered too crude and the angel too familiar. The painting was destroyed during the Fall of Berlin in 1945 and known by photographs.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, 1599-1600, oil on canvas, 10’7 1/2 “ x 11’ 3” Contarelli Chapel, Church of Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.
Permanently installed on the right wall of the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi, Caravaggio’s The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew erupts across the canvas in a chaotic, centrifugal burst of bodies and motion. The composition radiates outward from a single, horrifying fulcrum—the moment of the apostle’s death—captured with explosive, almost cinematic intensity. With this work, Caravaggio established himself as the unrivaled master of psychological violence in early Baroque art.
The narrative follows the traditional account in the Golden Legend. Saint Matthew, having publicly condemned King Hirticus of Ethiopia for lusting after his own niece, the consecrated virgin Iphigenia, is murdered in retaliation. Caravaggio distills the entire hagiography into one blinding instant: the assassin, a half‑nude royal soldier, lunges forward to strike the fatal blow as Matthew collapses, bleeding, onto the altar steps.
Caravaggio pushes tenebrism to its outer limit. The saint lies sprawled on the ground, his arms flung open in a gesture that hovers between defense and surrender. The executioner grips Matthew’s wrist, towering above him with a drawn sword, his face twisted in a scream of fury. Around them, witnesses recoil in terror, their bodies spiraling outward as if blasted by the force of the violence.
Yet amid the earthly chaos, the supernatural breaks through. A cloud gathers above the altar, and an angel descends—not to rescue Matthew, but to complete the drama of martyrdom. Leaning down from heaven, the angel extends the palm of victory, placing it into the saint’s wounded hand at the very moment the assassin’s sword arcs downward.
The intersection of these three elements—the angel’s arm, the soldier’s blade, and Matthew’s reaching hand—forms a powerful diagonal axis, a visual declaration that divine salvation overrides mortal execution. In this collision of heaven and earth, Caravaggio transforms a brutal killing into a moment of transcendent destiny.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Medusa (detail), 1600/01, oil on canvas mounted on a convex poplar-wood shield, Uffizi, Florence.
Caravaggio’s Medusa is painted on an actual parade shield.
Caravaggio’s Medusa (1600/01), now in the Uffizi Gallery, is one of the most astonishing feats of early Baroque engineering and psychological terror. Painted in oil on canvas and mounted onto a convex poplar shield, the work fuses myth, optics, and raw anatomy into a single, unnervingly lifelike apparition. Commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte and presented as a diplomatic gift to Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici, it was proudly displayed in the Medici Armory as both a marvel of craftsmanship and a symbol of dynastic power.
Because the surface curves outward, Caravaggio had to deploy advanced foreshortening and perspectival distortion to counteract the shield’s bulge. He subtly elongates Medusa’s cheeks and distorts her jawline so that, when viewed head‑on, the surface appears flat—or even concave—a technical sleight of hand that would have impressed both artists and scientists in Del Monte’s Roman circle.
Caravaggio captures the exact, electric instant between life and death. Perseus has already struck, yet Medusa’s nervous system still fires. Her face becomes a study in catastrophic realization: eyes bulging with shock and fury, brow knotted in disbelief, mouth wrenched open in a silent, blood‑freezing scream. True to his radical naturalism, Caravaggio did not invent stylized serpents; he studied real vipers, painting them mid‑coil, mid‑strike, writhing in panic as their host dies beneath them. From the severed neck, bright arterial blood spurts outward in jagged, hyper‑realistic streams.
To deepen the mythic resonance, Caravaggio anchors the work in the classical story as told by Ovid. According to the Metamorphoses, Perseus could only approach Medusa safely by looking at her reflection in the polished bronze shield given to him by Athena. By painting Medusa’s head directly onto a shield, Caravaggio transforms the viewer into Perseus himself—the one who sees the monster only through a mediated surface. The painting becomes a weapon, a mirror, and a mythic reenactment all at once.
For modern viewers, the shield reads as pure horror: a severed head frozen in the moment of its final scream. But for the Medici, it carried a very different charge. Medusa—whose gaze could immobilize armies—became a potent emblem of political dominion, a symbol of a ruler whose power could paralyze enemies before they even approached.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Basket of fruit (canestra di frutta), c. 1600/01, oil on canvas, 18 1/8 x 25 3/8, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan. https://www.ambrosiana.it/opere/canestra-di-frutta/ – retrieved October 13, 2024.
Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit is the only autonomous still life by the artist known to survive, though his figure paintings are filled with exquisitely rendered fruit that function as symbolic subtexts. Across his oeuvre, these arrangements vary widely in species, ripeness, and composition, yet they share a distinctive naturalism—blemishes, curling leaves, and the quiet drama of decay rendered with almost scientific precision.
The painting belonged to Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564–1631), cousin of Saint Charles Borromeo and, like him, Archbishop of Milan. A towering figure of the Counter‑Reformation, Federico championed religious art as a tool of pastoral instruction, yet he was also an unusually passionate collector of still life, a genre often dismissed as minor. Whether he commissioned Caravaggio’s painting or received it as a gift remains uncertain, but he valued it enough to bequeath it in his will to the Ambrosiana in Milan, the scholarly gallery and library he co‑founded in 1618.
The basket itself is instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with Caravaggio’s work. A nearly identical arrangement appears in the Supper at Emmaus in London’s National Gallery, painted around the same time. In both works, the fruit leans precariously over the edge, as if about to tumble into the viewer’s space—a hallmark of Caravaggio’s desire to collapse the boundary between the painting and the viewer.
Cardinal Borromeo lived in Rome from 1586 to 1601, precisely the years when Caravaggio’s reputation was rising with meteoric speed. During this period, he became deeply familiar with the painter’s radical naturalism. For a prelate devoted to both doctrinal clarity and the beauty of the created world, Caravaggio’s still life—so attentive to the fragile, transient nature of living things—would have held profound appeal.
Giulio Cesare Procaccini ((1574–1625), Cardinal-Archbishop Federico Borromeo, 1610, Museo diocesano di Milano.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Supper at Emmaus, c. 1600/01, oil on canvas, 54 ¾ x 76 ¾” The National Gallery, London.
Caravaggio’s Roman career accelerated rapidly after the triumph of the Contarelli Chapel commissions. Almost immediately he was engaged for another prestigious project in Santa Maria del Popolo, decorating the Cerasi Chapel. Although these were technically private commissions, their placement in major Roman churches ensured that Caravaggio’s work circulated before a broad public. By 1600 he had become one of the most sought‑after painters in the city, attracting both established patrons and ambitious newcomers such as the wealthy Mattei brothers, prominent Roman bankers. For one of them, in the family palazzo, Caravaggio produced The Supper at Emmaus (1601), a work executed at the apex of his early fame and artistic maturity.
What distinguishes this painting is not only Caravaggio’s reliance on live models and his anatomically precise naturalism, but his increasingly sophisticated deployment of light as a bearer of meaning rather than mere aesthetic embellishment. Instead of depicting the journey to Emmaus, Caravaggio selects the climactic instant at the supper table when the risen Christ blesses and breaks the bread and the disciples suddenly recognize him—just before he vanishes from their sight. Light becomes the visual analogue of recognition itself: a revelatory force that cuts through the scene with theological and psychological clarity.
Caravaggio dramatizes this moment with unprecedented immediacy. One disciple thrusts himself forward, his elbow projecting into the viewer’s space; the other flings his arms wide in astonished realization. Meanwhile the innkeeper, who has not grasped the miracle unfolding before him, remains enveloped in the darker register of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, his face still in shadow. The contrast is not incidental: it marks the divide between those who have entered the “light” of recognition and those who remain outside it.
The composition’s theatricality intensifies this effect. Caravaggio’s half‑length, tightly cropped figures press against the picture plane, collapsing the distance between sacred narrative and beholder. Everyday objects—fruit basket, tablecloth, the disciples’ garments—jut outward with near sculptural immediacy, creating a sensuous, almost tactile realism that anchors the miracle in the viewer’s own world. The result is a painting that is simultaneously grounded in contemporary Roman life and elevated by a supratemporal luminosity that signals divine presence.
Yet the work was not universally admired. Critics objected that Caravaggio’s Christ looked too youthful and unbearded—“a man posing as Christ who certainly was not Christ,” as Bellori complained in 1672. Caravaggio got the criticism though Michaelangelo Buonarroti did the same thing in the pope’s Sistine Chapel. Others scoffed that the fruit on the table could not have been in season during the post‑Easter episode. Such criticisms, however, reveal the very innovation of Caravaggio’s method: his commitment to inventing a world that is believable precisely because it is rooted in the observable, even when that realism unsettles traditional expectations. Unlike earlier artists who idealized sacred history, Caravaggio insisted on painting from life, even in a religious history painting intended for private devotion.
The Supper at Emmaus thus exemplifies Caravaggio’s distinctive achievement: a fusion of radical naturalism and spiritual intensity that collapses historical distance, bringing the sacred into the viewer’s present while simultaneously lifting the everyday into a realm of revelation.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Conversion of Saint Paul, 100/01, oil on canvas, 90 ½ x 70” Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria de Popolo, Rome.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Crucifixion of St. Peter, 1600/01, oil on canvas, 90 ½ x70” Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria de Popolo, Rome.
The chapel was purchased by Tiberio Cerasi (1544-1601) in 1600 who worked as Treasurer-General for Pope Clement VIII. Cerasi had the chapel redone by Carlo Maderno (1556-1629). In 1601 Cerasi hired Caravaggio to paint The Conversion of St. Paul and The Crucifixion of St. Paul. Notably, his paintings’ first versions were rejected. The final paintings were installed in 1605 and the chapel consecrated in 1506. The Assumption of Mary over the altar was painted at the same time by Annibale Caracci. See – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerasi_Chapel– retrieved October 14, 2024.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, 1601/02, oil on canvas, 42 1/8 x 57 ½” 118 × 156.5 cm Neues Palais, Potsdam.
Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas presents the New Testament encounter (John 20:27–31) with uncompromising naturalism and the stark drama of chiaroscuro. The painting’s later history is as turbulent as its subject. Originally owned by the powerful Giustiniani family, it was sold under financial duress and purchased in 1815 from a Paris dealer by King Frederick William III of Prussia (1770–1840). The king intended to assemble a public art museum for Berlin, yet this work—astonishingly—was initially judged “lower quality,” perhaps because Caravaggio offers no visible markers of Christ’s divinity. Instead, he renders the risen Christ with the same corporeal immediacy as the apostles, a choice that unsettled early nineteenth‑century connoisseurs.
Of the five Caravaggios acquired by the Prussian monarch, only three ultimately entered the museum collection, including Cupid as Victorious at the Gemäldegalerie. The Incredulity of Saint Thomas was instead hung in the Berlin Palace, and later, in 1856, installed in the picture gallery at Sanssouci, where its psychological intensity found a more appreciative audience.
Caravaggio’s interpretation of the biblical scene is uncompromisingly direct. Christ guides Thomas’s hand into the wound in his side, the gesture rendered with surgical clarity. The apostles crowd around, their faces lit by a single, directional beam that isolates the moment of recognition. There is no halo, no ethereal glow—only flesh, shadow, and the shock of belief forced into being. Caravaggio transforms a theological lesson into a moment of tactile revelation, collapsing the distance between viewer and miracle. https://brandenburg.museum-digital.de/object/11898 – retrieved October 11, 2024.
Frederick William III ruled Prussia during the Napoleonic Wars and, while shy and quiet by nature, reluctantly participated in the coalition against Napoleon in the German campaign of 1813. After Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, he took part in the Congress of Vienna and helped established the new postwar order in Europe. For the remainder of his reign, Frederick William III set about reforming Prussian institutions and centralizing royal control.
Youth With A Ram was painted for Ciriaco Mattei (d.1614), one of the foremost art collectors of his time, and given to Cardinal del Monte by his son before his death. Mattei also commissioned Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus and The Taking of Christ.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Taking of Christ, 1602, oil on canvas, 133.5 cm × 169.5 cm (52.6 in × 66.7 in) National Gallery of Ireland. On loan from the Society of Jesus, Leeson Street., Dublin.
The painting includes a self portrait of Caravaggio. Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1603, oil on canvas, 41 x 53 1/8” Uffizi, Florence.https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/sacrifice-of-isaac – retrieved October 12, 2024.
The painting illustrates the Old Testament story in which God subjected Abraham to an extraordinary test of obedience by ordering him to sacrifice his only son Isaac (Genesis 22: 1-19). Caravaggio faithfully depicts the crucial moment of this dramatic story, when old Abraham, at the very moment he is about to immolate a screaming Isaac, is blocked by an angel sent by the Lord.
The Deposition, considered one of Caravaggio’s greatest masterpieces, was commissioned by Girolamo Vittrice for his family chapel in Santa Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova) in Rome. In 1797 it was included in the group of works transferred to Paris in execution of the Treaty of Tolentino. After its return in 1817 it became part of Pius VII’s Pinacoteca.
Michelangelo Merisi, called the Caravaggio, DETAIL The Madonna of Loreto (The Madonna of the Pilgrims), circa1603-1604, Oil on canvas, 8’ 8 ½ x 4’ 11”, Cavalletti Chapel, Church of Sant’ Agostino, Rome.Michelangelo Merisi, called the Caravaggio, The Madonna of Loreto (The Madonna of the Pilgrims), circa1603-1604, Oil on canvas, 8’ 8 ½ x 4’ 11”, Cavalletti Chapel, Church of Sant’ Agostino, Rome.
The painting has been in the Cavalletti chapel in Rome since it was installed at the end of 1604.
Michelangelo Merisi, called the Caravaggio, Ecce Homo, c. 1604-05, oil on canvas, 50 ½ x 40 ½” Civic Collection, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa.
The painting was made for a competition with Domenico Passignano (1559-1638) and Lodovico Cardi (“Il Cigoli”) (1559-1613) soon after Il Cigoli first arrived in Rome. Il Cigoli won the compettion and the whereabouts of Caravaggio’s painting until it arrived to Genoa is uncertain. It may be that Caravaggio himself took it to Genoa when he visited there in 1605.
Michelangelo Merisi, called the Caravaggio, Saint John the Baptist, c. 1605, oil on canvas, 68 1/4 x 52” Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.
The painting was made for Ottavio Costa who then had a copy made for his chapel in Liguria while the original was lost. It resurfaced in the mid 19th century in England and was acquired by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in the 1950s. Caravaggio reveals the qualities of the saint by his expression and pose. He is sober and downcast with a tense energy as his pose manifests the monumentality of the prophets on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. With his staff he quietly and contemplatively conveys zeal, passion and vitality. There is a sense of his singleness of purpose, joined even to a little madness, as a man driven by making straight the paths of the Lord.
The painting was bought by King Charles I of England (1600-1649) in 1637. After the monarch’s defeat in the English Civil War (1642-1645), he was imprisoned and executed for high treason in 1649. During the Commonwealth (1649-1660), the painting was sold in 1651 and recovered at the Restoration. Caravaggio’s painting depicts the call of the very first disciples in the very first New Testament Gospel by Mark: “As he passed by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting their nets into the sea; they were fishermen. Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Then they abandoned their nets and followed him” (Mk 1:16-18). Caravaggio depicts Jesus without a beard as he turns back to invite them to follow him as he moves ahead. Fishermen, Simon Peter holds skewered fish on a stick while Andrew points to himself identifying the object of Jesus’s invitation.
As recently as 1987 this painting came to be attributed to Caravaggio and as the original of this painting’s subject matter. In varying copies of the work the furrow in Christ’s brow is painted faithfully though in this original it is not a painted feature but a canvas fold. There are other design features that, after recent cleaning and conservation, point to a later work of Caravaggio. Many small incisions are present in the artwork’s lower layers of paint that is an uncanny method used by the artist to lay out important points on the canvas for his design. Although the attribution can be argued to the contrary – such as the unusual use of the color blue which Caravaggio saw, according to Bellori, as the “poison of colors” – he did use the color and mostly softened as it is here. Blue, for instance, occurs in the Baptism of Christ (National Gallery of Ireland, c. 1603) and the Annunciation (Nancy, c. 1604). At the Supper at Emmaus (Brera, 1605-6) Christ also wears a robe of softened blue. In its telling broad brushwork, restrained colors, and minimal detail the painting was understood to be a Road to Emmaus painting as discussed by Giulio Mancini and Giovanni Baglione. But these early biographers’ references are likely to the Supper at Emmaus (National Gallery London, 1601). Dated stylistically by its economical, shadowed, and expressive manner, The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew appears to be from the period of 1603-1606. This would be before Caravaggio killed Ranuccio Tomassoni (c. 1580-1606) in a brawl and fled Rome in May 1606. During the first years of the 17th century, the sensuous surface detail of Caravaggio’s art had become spare, dark and expressive. Further, The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew places half-length figures interacting against a stark background, similar to such paintings as Doubting Thomas (Sanssouci, Potsdam) and the Betrayal of Christ (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), both of 1603. Before this painting reached England, there was a broadly interpreted copy of it that is today in a private collection by Bernardo Strozzi (1582-1644). Strozzi lived and worked in Rome, Genoa and Venice where he may have seen this painting by Caravaggio. When Charles I’s buying agent was later in Italy, he visited the same places as Strozzi had been, except Genoa.
The painting was commissioned in 1605 by members of the powerful archconfraternity of the Palafrenieri who, following the renovation of St. Peter’s Basilica, asked the painter for a new work intended to replace an old painting that decorated the altar of their chapel dedicated to St. Anne. Painted within a few months, in April 1606 the work was exhibited and shortly afterwards moved to the nearby church of Sant’Anna dei Palafrenieri where, seen by Scipione Borghese, it was bought by him. For whatever reason the painting was controversial – perhaps the cleavage of the Madonna or the rendering of the nudity of the child – but Scipione Borghese proudly hung it in his own picture gallery. The painting depicts Mary as she crushes a snake – a symbol of sin – at her feet with the help of Jesus and witnessed by Anna, mother of the Virgin.
Michelangelo Merisi, called the Caravaggio, Saint Jerome writing, 1605/06, oil on canvas, 116 cm x 153 cm, Borghese Gallery, Rome.
According to Bellori, the painting was made by Caravaggio for Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The cardinal was not only an avid and refined art collector but one of young Caravaggio’s earliest and greatest admirers recognizing the Lombard’s talent despite personality flaws or lack of connections in Rome. The painting depicts Saint Jerome (c. 340s-420), Doctor of the Church, best known for his translation of the Bible from Greek into Latin as well as his commentaries on the Bible. Caravaggio depicts the priest and confessor writing and studying the Holy Scriptures as a scholar, now in old age, who has dedicated his life as a humanist engaged in the complex translation and exegesis of the Church’s sacred text. The composition is divided into large fields of color in warm tones (the saint’s complexion and reddish mantle) and cold tones (the skull and shroud-like white cloth) with Jerome’s arm outstretched with writing instrument in hand across the picture to symbolically portray the unity of the scholar-saint’s dialogue with these opposites of nature including life and death, past and present. As there are many unfinished details in the painting, the artist’s style points to his rapid execution of the work. https://www.collezionegalleriaborghese.it/opere/san-girolamo – retrieved October 13, 2024.
DETAIL Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Death of The Virgin, c. 1605-1606, oil on canvas, 12’1 ½” x8’, Louvre, Paris.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Death of The Virgin, c. 1605-1606, oil on canvas, 12’1 ½” x8’, Louvre, Paris.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Madonna of the Rosary, c. 1605-1607, oil on canvas, 11’11 ½” x8’ 4”, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
The Madonna of the Rosary (1605-1607) is a monumental work of the Italian Baroque and one of the few large-scale, traditional altarpieces Caravaggio ever completed. Although its original patron remains unknown, the commission may have come from the powerful Colonna family, who sheltered the artist after he fled to Naples in 1606. Whoever commissioned it ultimately rejected the painting. It was taken to Naples and sold to Flemish art dealers, who transported it to Antwerp. There, a committee of artists, including Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, purchased it for St. Paul’s Dominican Church.
The painting unfolds as both visual drama and Catholic Counter-Reformation theology, collapsing heaven and earth into a single charged moment. High above, the Madonna sits enthroned with the Christ Child as she presents the rosary to Saint Dominic, clad in the black-and-white habit of his order. The rosary serves as heaven’s answer to Dominic’s prayers in the struggle against the thirteenth-century Albigensian heresy. At right stands Saint Peter Martyr, the first canonized martyr of the Dominican Order, elevated to sainthood by Pope Innocent IV only eleven months after his death and even before the canonization of the order’s founder, Saint Dominic. To this day, Peter Martyr, the fiery preacher who fought heresy throughout Northern Italy and was murdered by an axe blow to the head in 1252, remains the fastest canonization in Catholic Church history. Gazing directly at the viewer, he points toward the Christ Child, identifying Jesus as the ultimate source of divine grace.
Below, Caravaggio brings sacred history to the world’s barefoot and struggling poor. Kneeling in the dirt, their grimy feet and outstretched hands reach for the rosaries being distributed through Saint Dominic. In the left foreground, a wealthy donor in a black coat and crisp white ruff kneels while looking directly outward, drawing viewers into the drama.
In 1781, the painting was confiscated from St. Paul’s Dominican Church when Emperor Joseph II pressured the Dominicans to surrender, or “donate,” the masterpiece to his imperial collection. Today, it remains one of Caravaggio’s essential late works and a centerpiece of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where its powerful blend of realism, devotion, and theatrical display continues to command attention.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Seven Acts of Mercy, 1606, Oil in canvas, 12’ 9 ½” x 8’ 6 ½” Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples.
The Seven Acts of Mercy altarpiece was painted between September 23, 1606 and January 9, 1607 for which Caravaggio was paid 400 ducats. The commission required that the artist include the figure of the Madonna of the Misericordia and all the acts of mercy in one vertical canvas and whose overall achievement was a first in Italian art.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Salome, 1609/10, oil on canvas, 35 5/8 x 65 ¾” The National Gallery London.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Flagellation, 1607, oil on canvas, 9’ 4 ½” x 6’2” Capodimonte Museum, Naples.
The dramatic play of light and shadow throws into relief the melancholic expression on David’s face and the hauntingly lifelike head of Goliath, creating a palpable sense of guilt and redemption that resonates deeply with the viewer.
The head of Goliath is Caravaggio’s self portrait.
In addition to developing a considerable name as an artist, Caravaggio was a reputably volatile, bad-tempered and violent man. On May 29, 1606 Caravaggio killed Ranuccio Tomassoni in a fight, the cause of which is disputed, though it may have been over a Roman prostitute, Fillide Melandroni who had posed for Caravaggio several times. The capital crime forced Caravaggio to flee to Naples. A report written by the local coroner declared that the male victim died by Caravaggio’s attempt to castrate him, the code on the Roman street meriting it for a man who insulting another man’s woman. Caravaggio became a fugitive from the law though he continued to paint (Supper at Emmaus) and fled to Naples by the end of 1606. In Naples he painted Flagellation and Seven Works of Mercy, among others. He fled further to Malta and then to Sicily where Caravaggio moved from town to town across the island fearing some unnamed retribution. It was presumed that 38-year-old Caravaggio died from syphilis or perhaps malaria or the Malta Fever though there is current speculation the artist may have been murdered in revenge for his crimes by perhaps members of the Tomassoni family or the Royal Knights. see – https://www.italianartsociety.org/2018/05/on-29-may-1606-the-great-italian-baroque-painter-caravaggio-killed-ranuccio-tommasoni-in-rome/ ; https://thecinemaholic.com/ranuccio-tomassoni-caravaggio/– retrieved October 15, 2024.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Portrait of a Courtesan (Fillide Melandroni), c, 1599. Destroyed Berlin 1945. Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Supper at Emmaus,1606, oil on canvas, 141 x 175 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
Caravaggio’s later Supper at Emmaus in Milan’s Brera Gallery intensifies the drama and imposes greater stylistic discipline compared to the earlier London version painted five years prior. The gestures are more restrained and the palette more muted, allowing the dramatic accents to emerge with heightened clarity despite the overall reduction of detail. Objects are rendered with deliberate precision—the urn angled toward the viewer, the plates catching narrow rims of reflected light—each contributing to the painting’s controlled visual rhetoric.
The composition organizes itself in a semicircular sweep of gestures around the table, rising diagonally from Christ’s head to the sharply profiled disciple and then to the standing figures beyond. The entire scene is suffused with a concentrated, directional illumination that culminates on the face of the risen Christ, reinforcing the painting’s theological and dramatic center.
SOURCE: Brera Milan: Great Museums of the World (Great Museums of the World, volume 14), Newsweek, Inc. & Arnoldo Monadori Editore, 1970, pp. 68-69.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Beheading of St John, 1608, St John’s Co-Cathedral, Valetta, Malta.Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), St. Francis of Assisi in Meditation, 1606/07, oil on canvas, Pinacoteca Civica Museo ala Ponzone Cremona.Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt with his Page, 1606/07, oil on canvas, 195 x 134 cm, Louvre.
The subject was the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta. In exchange for this grand portrait, according to Bellori and Baglione, Caravaggio became a Knight of Malta on an accelerated timetable though soon after the artist fled the island in disgrace.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Burial of Saint Lucy, 1608/9, oil on canvas, 13′ 4 1/2″ x 9′ 10″ 408 x 300 cm, Church of Santa Lucia,Syracuse in deposit at the Galleria Regionale, Palazzo Bellomo, Syracuse, Sicily.
The famous Caravaggio painting depicting the burial of Santa Lucia once hung in the Church of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro, but today is in Siracusa’s Palazzo Bellomo museum. The original church, built as early as the 6th century, was on the site of Saint Lucy’s martyrdom in the early 4th century. Beneath the sanctuary is a vast labyrinth of dark catacombs dating from the 3rd century which have never been completely explored and are closed to the public. Once containing the tomb of the decapitated saint, her remains were relocated to Venice during the Crusades and where they can be found today. This painting was made by Caravaggio between October 1608 in Malta and early 1609 in Sicily in a commission arranged by his old friend painter Mario Minniti. Caravaggio was on the run in Sicily starting in late 1608 when he arrived into Siracusa, and then onto Messina followed by Palermo. In Sicily, the exile Caravaggio painted Resurrection of Lazarus, The Adoration of the Shepherds (Adorazione dei pastori) and Ecce Homo. In late 1609 he returned to Naples and continued painting, including another St. John the Baptist and, his final artwork, The Martyrdom of St. Ursula. In Naples the artist was attacked in the street by four armed men shortly after his arrival where Caravaggio was seriously injured. see – https://www.frommers.com/destinations/syracuse-and-ortygia-island/attractions/santa-lucia-al-sepolcro; https://www.great-sicily.com/post/the-byzantine-era-in-sicily – retrieved October 15, 2024.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Adorazione dei pastori (The Adoration of the The Shepherds), 1609, oil on canvas, 10′ 3 1/2 ” x 6′ 11″, Messina, Sicily, Museo regionale interdisciplinare.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), La Resurrezione di Lazzaro (The Resurrection of Lazarus), 1609, oil on canvas, 10′ 3 1/2 ” x 6′ 11″, Messina, Sicily, Museo regionale interdisciplinare.
In Malta Caravaggio became a Knight of Malta but got into another violent group brawl where a knight was badly injured. With a warrant put out for his arrest Caravaggio managed to flee to Sicily in October 1608. By December 1608 Caravaggio was found guilty in abstentia and removed from the Maltese order. The commission for this painting came from Giovanni Battista de’ Lazzari, a merchant of Genoese origin who had obtained permission to be buried in the choir chapel of the church of Saints Peter and Paul de’ Pisani (demolished in 1880) in Messina where Camillo de’ Lellis’ religious order, founded in 1591 and dedicated to the care of the sick, had a house. De’Lazzari’s signed contract on December 6, 1608, declared that his new altarpiece would have the Madonna and St. John with saints as its subject. But that was changed to the resurrection of Lazarus (Gospel of John, chapter 11). It is very likely the change was made by De’Lazzari in agreement with the Camillians. According to Susinno, the artwork’s 13 figures were staff members of the hospital where Caravaggio did the painting. see – https://federica90.wixsite.com/emozionearte/post/caravaggio-in-sicilia-la-resurrezione-di-lazzaro – retrieved October 15, 2024.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Denial of St. Peter,1609/10, oil on canvas, 94 x 125.4 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The Denial of Saint Peter is generally thought to be one of the last pair of artworks by Caravaggio, the other being The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula. It was probably finished at Naples in the summer of 1610.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), St. John the Baptist, 1610, oil on canvas, 159 x 124.5 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome.
Caravaggio carried this painting and others sailing from Naples to Rome hoping for a pardon from the pope. Instead, when the desperate artist landed he was arrested and the boat was sent back to Naples with the paintings. Caravaggio died on July 18, 1610 in Porto Ercole. The papal nuncio secured this painting for Cardinal Scipione Borghese. see – https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/caravaggios-martyrdom-of-saintt-ursula/ – retrieved October 15, 2024.
LAST PAINTING.
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, 1610, oil on canvas, 142 x180 cm, Naples, Galleria di Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano.
Caravaggio’s The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula was painted in the last month of his life. It contains his characteristic and revolutionary chiaroscuro, naturalism, and depiction of psychological and physical emotion. The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula was commissioned by Genoese art patron Marcantonio Doria. The painting was finished in May and arrived in Genoa in mid-June 1610. Ursula was a venerated but almost completely legendary figure. In typical fashion Caravaggio dispels traditional religious iconography associated with Ursula — a crown, halo, palm branch, the 11,000 virgin martyr companions — for the painful moment in her story when the Barbarian king shoots the arrow into Ursula’s chest that kills her.
Caravaggio’s The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula marked a watershed in European art. His revolutionary style inspired subsequent generations of painters, such as Artemisia Gentileschi (1593—1651), Giovanni Baglione (1566-1643), and Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639), that became known as the Caravaggisti. He also influenced international Baroque artists including Spaniard Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) and Dutchman Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). see – https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/the-martyrdom-of-saint-ursula-caravaggio – retrieved October 15, 2024.
FEATURE Image: Raphael, Portraits of Agnolo Doni and Maddalena Doni, c. 1506, oil on panel, 24 ¾ x 17 ¾” Pitti Gallery, Florence.
Raphael, Self-portrait at 23 years old, 1504–1506. Tempera on panel, 47.5 cm × 33 cm (18.7 in × 13 in), Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy.
INTRODUCTION.
Urbino, Florence, and Artistic Formation Born in Urbino in 1483, an environment rich in the arts and humanist learning, Raphael had a remarkable capacity for personal growth and branded new incarnations of his artistic style regularly. He moved to Florence toward the end of 1504. Giorgio Vasari in his chapter on Raphael describes an episode where the artist of Urbino, already in his thirties with a reputation as a master, went back to study the nude (male) form with Michelangelo as his guide. Vasari’s admiration in telling this story goes beyond Raphael’s humility in assuming the role of student again (he studied constantly anyway) but that his learning always improved his artistic output.
Learning from Perugino, Leonardo, and Michelangelo In the study of nudes, however, artistic growth came perhaps not as the artist expected or intended. Whether Raphael entered the workshop of Perugino at that time or, as seems more likely, many years later when he was already an acknowledged artist, he quickly mastered Perugino’s delicate, ornamental style, with its open landscapes and gentle figures. It was said that contemporaries had trouble distinguishing Perugino’s work from Raphael’s, but Raphael’s compositions were more sophisticated even when he was a young artist. While Raphael mastered Michelangelo’s (and Leonardo’s) art forms convincingly, he also realized he was no match for the creator of the Sistine Chapel and other chiseled works insofar as the nude male forms.1
Testing Limits and Discovering Strengths Yet Raphael consolidated his strengths by testing his limits. A major strength, Vasari believed, was Raphael’s ability to draw and compose a wide range of subjects, such as landscape, architecture, draperies, and the human figure. Up to that time that had been what the artist was doing and would now unflinchingly continue to do on a grander scale, for example, in the Stanzae.
Rome and the High Renaissance Ideal In 1508 the pope called Raphael to Rome. Influenced by the idealized, classical art of the city’s ancient past, Raphael’s work took on a new grandeur. He also responded to the more energetic and physical style of Michelangelo, whose works he had already begun to study in Florence. Vasari believed Raphael had the gift to congeal the “poetic moment” by depicting in his painting the most significant gesture and force of action. With the possible exception of Leonardo, he is probably the unparalleled master of excellent design.2
Raphael and the Popes The precocious Raphael Sanzio also benefited from early opportunities given to him by his father to cultivate his talent. The artist’s own determination to succeed in his métier paid off when he was summoned to work at the Vatican by the Pope in 1509, arguably the greatest art patron in an age of art patrons. 3 The early sixteenth century was an age where patrons were as luminous as their artists and the coming together of Raphael and Julius II, and later Leo X, made for a celebrity team.
Vasari’s Judgment of Raphael While Vasari meticulously tells the reader of the artist’s “judicious” character – and that Raphael was extremely “amatory” and implying it aided in his death – the chronicler describes, often from memory, his preferences in Raphael’s art work. His collective response, for example, to all four frescos in the Camera d’Eliodoro is that he is most impressed by Raphael’s interesting decorative details, beautiful movements and gestures, the sheer number of figures portrayed, and his ability to express complex ideas and stories on a two-dimensional surface.4
Raphael’s Enduring Legacy With Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Michelangelo (1475-1564) Raphael is one of the great masters of the High Renaissance. Raphael and his large team of assistants left behind a large body of influential work, especially in the Vatican where the artist spent the last 12 years of his life, although Raphael died at 37 years old. For most of the history of Western art, the easy grace and harmonious balance of Raphael’s style has represented an ideal of perfection. His work became widely influential through the dissemination of prints. Raphael was also the city’s leading portraitist, creating penetrating psychological images that engaged viewer and sitter with a new intensity.
FROM URBINO TO FLORENCE: THE FORMATION OF A MASTER
Raphael, S. Niccolo Da Tolentino Altarpiece, 1501, oil on panel, 44 x45 ¼ in., Capodimonte Museum, Naples, Italy.
The Baronci Altarpiece is Raphael’s first recorded commission. It was made for the patron’s chapel in the church of Sant’Agostino in Città di Castello, a commune between Arezzo and Urbino, north of Perugia. In 1789 the artwork was badly damaged in an earthquake and surviving fragments were acquired by the Vatican until they mysteriously dispersed in the mid-19th century and found their way into different collections. Raphael’s commission of 1501 was to paint a large altarpiece dedicated to the Augustinian saint Nicholas of Tolentino (c. 1246– September 10, 1305). Nicholas was canonized by Augustinian Pope Eugene IV in 1446. While today’s saints require 1-2 miracles, St. Nicolas Tolentino was credited at his canonization with 300 miracles – including 3 resurrections. (see – Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Volume 2, André Vauchez, Richard Barrie Dobson, Michael Lapidge. Chicago: Fitzroy, Dearborn, 2000).
Raphael, angel, fragment Baronci altarpiece. Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia. Raphael, The Crucifixion, 1502-03, oil on polar, 283.3 × 167.3 cm, National Gallery, London.
The Crucifixionwas done in 1503 for Domenico Gavari for his S. Domenico chapel in Città di Castello. Angels are poised on toes on a cloud as their cups catch Christ’s dripping blood. Mary Magdelene and St. Jerome (holding a rock) are on their knees while the Virgin Mary and St. John stand. The sun and moon in the sky was characteristic of Crucifixion paintings in Umbria (p. 13, Jones & Penny). It was bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1924. Gavari was a close friend of Andrea Baronci, for whom Raphael painted the Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Altarpiece for the church of S. Agostino, also in Città di Castello. Saint Jerome, of course, was not present at the Crucifixion but is included in this scene because the chapel was dedicated to him. The overall design is based on several versions of the crucified Christ in a landscape painted by Perugino in the late 1480s and 1490s, and is especially similar to his altarpiece of the Crucifixion for the convent of S. Francesco al Monte in Perugia, commissioned in 1502 and completed 1506. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/raphael-the-mond-crucifixion – retrieved September 5, 2024.
Raphael, Coronation of the Virgin (Oddi Altarpiece), 1503-1504, Oil on canvas, 8’9” x 5’4”, Pinacoteca, Vatican, Rome.
Raphael painted altarpieces for the Augustinians and Dominicans and the Oddi Altarpiece (above and below) was done for the Franciscans. It was commissioned by the Oddi family chapel in S. Francesco al Prato. The Oddi were in exile from Perugia since 1495 because of battles between families and returned in 1503. The altarpiece was part of honoring their family members. The painting is divided into an upper part depicting the coronation of the Virgin and, in the lower part, the Apostles at the time of the Assumption. In the center, the apostle Thomas holds the Virgin’s girdle that the Virgin lowered to him as a token of these supernatural events. This display of theology was precious to the Franciscans at the time who were promoting the Virgin Mary. They were likely very involved in directing the artist in its composition. (Roger & Jones, pp. 15-16).
Raphael, Coronation of the Virgin (Oddi Altarpiece), 1503-1504, Oil on canvas, 8’9” x 5’4”, Pinacoteca, Vatican, Rome. DETAIL. Raphael, Spozalizio (The Engagement of the Virgin Mary), 1504, oil on panel, 67 x 46 ½” Brera Gallery, Milan.
The composition of the Spozalizioreflects the influence of Perugino, specifically the fresco done by him in the Sistine Chapel in 1484. In terms of its architectural setting, Raphael was influenced by Piero della Francesca (c.1416-1492) and Bramante (1444-1514). The painting’s architectural structure shares centrality in the painting with the foreground figures done in a perspectival arrangement. Within the figures are members of the party positioned in depth. Joseph places a ring on Mary’s finger whose positioning bisects the artwork. A tawny gold tone pervades the painting. It was commissioned by the Alberini family for a chapel in S. Francesco of the Friars Minor at Città di Castello in Perugia. (Brera Milan, p 34)
Raphael, The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Five Saints (Colonna Altarpiece), c. 1504-1505, oil on panel, 68 x 68” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
Raphael painted the Colonna Altarpiece for the Franciscan convent of Sant’Antonio in Perugia. It hung in a part of the church reserved for the nuns. The pair of voluminous saints straddling each side of the throne reflect the progressive style of Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolomeo (1472-1517) that Raphael was studying in Florence. The lunette above the main panel depicts God the Father holding a globe and raising his right hand in blessing situated between two angels and two seraphim. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437372 – retrieved September 5, 2024.
Raphael, The Small Cowper Madonna, c. 1505 59.5 x 44 cm (23 7/16 x 17 5/16 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
The Small Cowper Madonna includes an agreeable background landscape. In a vertical painting, a haloed woman and nude child sit before an expansive grass field extending behind them to a group of trees and buildings on a hill in the distance among hazy blue hills beneath a blue sky. https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1196.html – retrieved September 8, 2024.
St. Michael the Archangel vanquishing Satan and Saint George slaying the Dragon.
These early works by the artist depict the popular subjects of St. Michael the Archangel vanquishing Satan and Saint George slaying the Dragon, each showing the martial subject of good combatting evil. These were early private commissions for the court of Urbino. Saint George was a Christian Roman soldier who, pious legend informs, subdued a dragon and, with the daughter of a pagan king, brought it to the city, where St. George killed it with his sword. These heroic actions witnessed by the king and his subjects led to their conversion to Christianity. The historic figure of Saint George was martyred around the year 290. https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.28.html – retrieved September 4, 2024.
Raphael, Saint Michael and The Dragon, c. 1505, oil on panel, 12 ¼” x 10 ¼” The Louvre Paris https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010060773 – retrieved September 4, 2024Raphael, Saint Michael and The Dragon, c. 1505, oil on panel, 12 1/4 x 10 ¼” The Louvre, Paris https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010060772 – retrieved September 4, 2024.Raphael, Saint George and the Dragon, c. 1506, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.Raphael, The Three Graces, 1505-1506, oil on panel, 6 ¾ x 6 ¾” Condé Museum, Chantilly.
The panel of The Three Graces was recorded in the Borghese collection in 1650. It accompanied the Dream of Scipio, an oil on panel, today in the National Gallery of London. The figures were derived from ancient classical sculpture and depict, likely, Chastity, Beauty and Love. Chastity’s lower torso is veiled and an arm covers her breasts from view. Amor’s breasts, by contrast, are revealed. Chastity also wears no adornment as do Beauty and Amor. While the figures are modeled similarly, the space between them is disparate and Beauty blocks Chastity’s leg. (Jones & Penny, p. 8; Beck, pp. 62-63).
Raphael, Portrait of Agnolo Doni, c. 1506, oil on panel, 24 ¾ x 17 ¾” Pitti Gallery, Florence.
Agnolo Doni (above) is the only Florentine portrait in these first years mentioned by Vasari though paired with its companion portrait of Maddalena Doni (below).Doni was an art collector who married the daughter of Giovanni Strozzi in 1503. Agnolo was 10 years older than his wife who was in her teens. The portraits are painted on identically sized panel and are intended to hang next to one another. Raphael took great care in depicting the corporeal reality of his subjects, particularly appreciated in their faces and hands (though Agnolo Doni’s portrait is more detailed than his wife’s.) In both Doni portraits the sitters show-off their jewelry – such as rings and, in Maddalena’s portrait, a large pearl hanging around her neck. (Roger & Penny, p. 29-30)
Raphael, Portrait of Maddalena Doni, c. 1506, oil on panel, 24 ¾ x 17 ¾” Pitti Gallery, Florence.Raphael, The Madonna of the Granduca, c. 1506, Oil on panel, 33 x 21 1/2 “ Pitti gallery, Florence.
Raphael’s Madonna del Granduca (The Madonna of the Grand Duke), a quintessential masterpiece of the High Renaissance painted around 1505–1506. The figures emerge from a stark, dark background that was added in the 17th century. Originally, Raphael painted a window opening to a landscape behind the Madonna. Raphael utilizes Leonardo’s sfumato technique—the subtle, smoky blending of colors and tones—visible in the gentle shadows defining Mary’s eyelids, chin, and the soft flesh of the infant. The painting gets its name from Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who purchased it in 1799.
Raphael, Lady with a Unicorn, 1506, oil on panel, 65 cm × 51 cm (26 in × 20 in), Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy.
Lady with a Unicorn was of uncertain attribution until recent times. In the 1760 inventory of the Gallery, the subject of the painting was identified as Saint Catherine of Alexandria and attributed to Perugino. A restoration of the painting in 1934 revealed a unicorn, the medieval symbol for chastity, and led to the painting’s attribution to Raphael. In 1959 an x-ray revealed a small dog under the unicorn which symbolized conjugal fidelity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Woman_with_Unicorn – retrieved September 7, 2024.
Raphael, The Holy Family With Saints Elizabeth and John (The Canigiani Holy Family), c. 1506-07, oil on panel, 51 ½ x 42 1/8” Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
Visible on The Canigiani Holy Family on the hem of the Madonna’s scarf is inscribed, “Raphael Urbanas.” The fresco and easel painter was active mainly in Umbria, in Florence after 1504, and in Rome in 1509 until his death. It was painted for Domenico Canigiani where Vasari saw it later. It entered the Medici collection and when a Medici daughter married an Elector Palatine it accompanied her over the Alps to Germany. (Pinakothek Munich Great Museums of the World, Roberto Salvini, et. al., Newsweek NY 1969 pp. 126). In Raphael’s Florentine period, his work marks A transition away from the rigid, flat style of his master Perugino toward a more humanized, emotionally complex, and three-dimensional portrayal of sacred figures.
Raphael, Madonna del Cardellino, 1506-07, oil on panel, 42 1/8 x 30 ¼” Uffizi Gallery Florence.
The three figures in Madonna del Cardellinoare closely integrated and display a greater sense of volume. The painting is dated 1507 on the hem of the Virgin’s garment. In the painting Saint John the Baptist presents a goldfinch (cardellino) to the Christ child which is a symbol of the Passion. (Roger & Penny, p. 33)
The Deposition, 1507, oil on panel, 72 ½ x 69 ¼” Borghese Gallery, Rome.
After seeing Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascia in Florence Raphael’s style immediately applied their innovative principles changing the trajectory of his artwork. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were in a pitched battle for the future of art during their fabled competition to decorate the Great Council Hall in Florence. Raphael studied closely these complex drawings of heroic violence. Though Raphael was familiar with violent combat in Perugia and elsewhere, it was its depiction in these artworks in Florence that such dynamic convolutions began to appear in his own work such as The Deposition (above and below) although he may have had in mind Perugino’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ from 1495. In the finished painting the action takes place from right to left: a group of women attending to a swooning Virgin to the Magdalene grasping Christ’s hand to look into his face. (Roger & Penny, pp. 37-44).
The Deposition, 1507, oil on panel, 72 ½ x 69 ¼” Borghese Gallery, Rome. DETAIL. Raphael, La Belle Jardinière, 1507-08, oil on panel, 48 x 31 ½” The Louvre, Paris.
In La Belle Jardinière the arch-topped Madonna painting features Saint John the Baptist kneeling before the Christ child. It was Leonardo da Vinci who formulated the pyramidal structure for the Holy Family and half-length portrait, and it seems Raphael looked to explore his idea for his narrative. (Roger & Penny, p. 33)
Raphael, The Madonna of the Baldacchino, 1508, oil on canvas, 9’ x7’4” Pitti Gallery Florence.
The Madonna of the Baldacchinowas started by Raphael and finished after his death (Roger & Penny, p. 44). It was Raphael’s first major commission in Florence for the Dei family chapel in the Santo Spirito basilica (1487) and remained unfinished when the 25-year-old artist was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II, nicknamed the Fearsome, who reigned on Peter’s chair from 1503 to 1513. Pope Julius, born Giuliano della Rovere in 1443, took his name specifically from Julius Caesar (d. 44 BCE). In 1508, this “Battle Pope” as he was known, commissioned the Raphael Rooms and Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. Raphael’s enthroned Madonna and Child is with, from left, Sts. Peter, Bernard of Clairvaux, James the Greater and St. Augustine of Hippo. The group is joined by two putti at the foot of the throne’s high pedestal steps. It is a large format painting whose size was increased when it was restored and “completed” at the end of the 17th century to meet the tastes of a Medici prince. Raphael is cited for being an imitator more than originator and this is exampled in the Christ Child playing with his toes whose pudgy type derives from the workshop of Florentine sculptor Luca Della Robbia (c. 1400-1482). The painting can be read right to left as St. Augustine, looking at the viewer, gestures, with St. James gazing in a similar direction, towards the throne and its occupants and then crosses to St. Bernard whose backward glance ends in conversation with St. Peter holding a book and large key. Once in Rome, Raphael continued these simple straight forward readings of his artworks’ often complex network of figures beginning in his famous frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura (1508-1511) yet by then with greater refinement and heroism. In 1799 The Madonna of the Baldacchino was confiscated by French forces and taken to Paris only to be returned to Florence in 1813. (Beck, pp. 78-79).
Raphael, St. Catherine of Alexandria, oil on panel, c. 1507, 71 x 56 cm, National Gallery of Art, London.
Raphael’s St. Catherine of Alexandria, a Fourth Century mystic and martyr, is not an object for devotion but dramatizes an example of devotion. The turned figure derives from Leonardo da Vinci and expresses an emotional animation that is one of the strongest depictions in Raphael’s oeuvre. (Roger & Penny, p. 44). The portrait is joined to a landscape as the saint leans on a spiked wheel which is her symbol as it was the manner of her death as a martyr. Raphael looks to capture the mystical or visionary aspect of the saint as she places her hand over her heart and gazes upwards to a golden break in the sky. The figure is very dynamic moving beyond Perugino’s influence of angelic air and distant landscapes and towards Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci whose monumentality and detailed arrangements Raphael studied in Florence. It is unknown who commissioned the artwork and for exactly what purpose it was intended. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/raphael-saint-catherine-of-alexandria – retrieved September 6, 2024.
Raphael, The Niccolini-Cowper Madonna, 1508, oil on panel, 80.7 x 57.5 cm (31 3/4 x 22 5/8 in., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.27.html – retrieved September 8, 2024.
The Niccolini-Cowper Madonna (also known as the Large Cowper Madonna) was painted in 1508 near the end of Raphael’s celebrated Florentine period. The infant Jesus reaches out to clutch the bodice of Mary’s dress which introduces a deeply human element, transforming a sacred, holy icon into an intimate moment shared between a mother and her playful toddler. Raphael utilizes Leonardo’s signature sfumato technique to build physical volume and three-dimensional realism. The painting belonged to the aristocratic Niccolini family in Florence. In 1780, it was purchased by George Clavering-Cowper, the 3rd Earl Cowper who also owned a smaller earlier version of the Madonna by Raphael.
RAPHAEL IN ROME: THE VATICAN COMMISSIONS
Commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508 for his private apartments in the Apostolic Palace, The Raphael Rooms (Stanze di Raffaello) are a suite of four grand reception chambers that are now part of the Vatican Museums. These rooms include:
The Sala di Costantino. With its theme of the triumph of Christianity over paganism, it contains The Vision of the Cross, The Battle of the Milvian Bridge, The Baptism of Constantine, and The Donation of Constantine.
With its theme of Divine protection of the Church during political crises, the Stanza di Eliodoro contains The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, The Mass at Bolsena, The Liberation of Saint Peter and The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila.
The Stanza della Segnatura (Julius II’s library/study), with its theme of harmony of human knowledge across Theology, Philosophy, Poetry, and Justice, includes The School of Athens, La Disputa, and The Parnassus.
With its theme of Glorifying Pope Leo X, Stanza dell’Incendio del Borgo (papal dining room) contains The Fire in the Borgo (L’Incendio del Borgo); The Battle of Ostia; Coronation of Charlemagne; and Oath of Leo III.
The Frescoes as Immersive Theater
Raphael’s artwork in these rooms has the effect of cinema in presenting nearly life-sized figures in space that, hoisted onto the wall like a massive theatre screen, fills the room’s field of vision. Further, as a modern-day film dispels incredulity to its medium and any message it conveys, absorbing the viewer, Raphael’s fresco makes intensely real the Catholic faith.
Artistic Borrowing and Reinvention
Raphael frequently adapted individual figures and entire figural groupings from one fresco to another, refining successful visual ideas and integrating them into new compositions. This creative process enabled him to establish thematic and stylistic continuity across the Vatican rooms while continually enriching their complexity.
Michelangelo’s Influence
Raphael was also deeply influenced by Michelangelo’s newly unveiled Sistine Chapel ceiling. He studied its monumental prophets and sibyls closely, incorporating their sculptural power, dynamic poses, and psychological intensity into his own work. Rather than merely imitating Michelangelo, Raphael absorbed these innovations and transformed them within his own more harmonious and balanced visual language.
Perspective and Spatial Mastery
Beyond Michelangelo’s influence, Raphael was intensely interested in the challenges of foreshortening and the organization of large groups of figures within mathematically constructed perspectival settings. His ability to arrange complex assemblies of people within coherent architectural spaces contributed significantly to the intellectual clarity, visual grandeur, and persuasive realism that distinguish the frescoes of the High Renaissance.
Stanza della Segnatura
Raphael, c. 1509, fresco, 47 ½ x 41 ½” Ceiling, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.
At the time of the papal commission Raphael had little experience painting large frescos but revolutionized the tradition. The basic scheme of the decoration presents four tondi of abstract ideas of Theology, Poetry, Philosophy and Law. The Fall or Adam and Eve on the Brink of Disobedience, along with the Judgment of Solomon on the ceiling relates to themes of Theology and Law as the ceiling’s admixture of pagan scenes including Urania, and Apollo and Marsyas relate to Poetry and Philosophy. (Roger & Penny – pp 50-52).
Raphael, The Fall, c. 1509, fresco, 47 ½ x 41 ½” Ceiling, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.DETAIL.
Theology and the Catholic Faith
Raphael, The Disputation over the Sacrament (Disputa), 1509-10, fresco, 25’3” at base, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.
In The Disputationangels in the vault accompany God the Father as a white-robed God the Son sits enthroned before a golden disc displaying his sacrificial wounds of the Cross. On each side of Christ sit the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist while on the raised tier sits figures from the Bible. The Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove on the monstrance holding the Eucharist. Many preparatory drawings survive for this fresco. (Roger & Penny, pp.57-58)
Raphael, Detail, The Disputation over the Sacrament (Disputa), 1509-10, fresco, 25’3” at base, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.
Detail of the young scribe (or amanuensis) at the feet of Saint Augustine from the earthly zone of Raphael’s celebrated fresco, The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament (La Disputa), located in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican Palace. Raphael painted these characters using pseudo-script.
Philosophy and Classical Learning
Raphael, The School of Athens, 1510-11, Fresco, 25’3” at base, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.
Compared to the architecture in his Spozalizio from 1504, Raphael’s architecture in The School of Athens is more massive and yet whose angular lines are softened by the contours of colossal statues in niches. One statue is Minerva above Jurisprudence while Apollo is on the left (and closest to the Parnassus fresco). The central figures below the arches, open sky behind them, are Plato with his Timaeus and Aristotle with his Ethics. Other recognizable figures include Socrates to the left of Plato and Pythagoras to the right of the door. (Roger & Penny p 74-78).
Raphael, The School of Athens, 1510-11, Fresco, 25’3” at base, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.
Euclid bends down to use one of his compasses surrounded by students and disciples.
Poetry and the Imagination
Raphael, Parnassus, c. 1511, fresco, 22’1 ½” at base. Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.
Raphael painted a poet’s paradise in Parnassus where Apollo has the central place. The window which interrupts the base of the artwork looked out onto a hill in Rome called Mons Vaticanus that was known since classical times as sacred to Apollo. This fact with the fresco’s other siting challenges (window glare) Raphael was well aware of. Apollo plays the fiddle surrounded by poets and gorgeous muses with a background of laurel trees. Mortals are below on either side of the window. (Roger & Penny, pp. 68-69)
Stanza della Segnatura. The tile floors were designed by the Della Robbia brothers. Public Domain.
PAPAL POWER AND DIVINE INTERVENTION
Stanza di Eliodoro
Raphael, The Expulsion of Heliodoris From the Temple, 1512-13, Fresco, 24’7” at base. Stanza D’Eliodoro, Vatican, Rome.
The Stanza D’Eliodoro served as a Vatican audience chamber for the Pope. Each fresco depicts a story of divine intervention and the Pope felt impelled to record them like a civic authority would record an important battle scene in the town hall. The Pope had control over the message and even had himself inserted into these works and one of the best portraits of the pope by Raphael.5 Vasari believed that in the Expulsion of Heliodorus the message was clear: it was the Pope chasing avarice out of the church. Still others, more realistic perhaps, believed the theme to be the defense of the Church’s right to worldly possessions.6While Julius II kept the treasury full and spent lavishly on public works, he also formally condemned his predecessor’s self-enrichment as well as the Church practice of buying and selling its offices. Others impute Pope Julius II making a parallel between Heliodorus’ expulsion and the Pope’s battle to expel rebellious cardinals who supported the French king against Rome.7 The first fresco painted in the Stanza D’Eliodoro and the one the room is named for is also, in my opinion, the finest: The Expulsion of Heliodorus. Heinrich Wölfflin in his book Classic Art provides the most satisfying brief account of this fresco, although there are other observers who offer insight and detail. The painting is based on an account found in 2 Maccabees, a book that treats of the events in Jewish history from the time of the high priest Onias III and King Seleucus IV to the defeat of Nicanor’s army (around 170 B.C). The biblical account of Heliodorus’ attempt to profane the Temple is a rich one and, in terms of the painting’s iconography, can be synopsized as such:
“There was great distress throughout the city. Priests prostrated themselves in their priestly robes before the altar, and loudly begged him in heaven…to keep the deposits safe for those who had made them…(T)he changed color of the (high priest’s) face manifested the anguish of his soul. The terror and bodily trembling that had come over the man clearly showed…People rushed out…in crowds to make public supplication because the Place was in danger of being profaned…Women, girded…filled the streets…While they were imploring the almighty Lord to keep the deposits safe and secure… Heliodorus went on with his plan. But just as he was approaching the treasury with his bodyguards, the Lord of spirits… (struck). There appeared to them a richly caparisoned horse, mounted by a dreadful rider. Charging furiously the horse attacked Heliodorus with his front hoofs…Then two other young men, remarkably strong…beautiful…splendidly attired, appeared…they flogged (Heliodorus) unceasingly…Suddenly, he fell to the ground enveloped in a great darkness…The man who a moment ago had entered that treasury with a great retinue and his whole bodyguard was carried away helpless…” (2 Maccabees, Chapter 3:14-28)
Raphael followed the biblical text closely. He depicts the three major parties in the religious story: the divine rider, two youths and Heliodorus; the figure of the anguished priest; and the “girded” women. As he does in The Deliverance of Saint Peter, the Pope identifies with one of the major priestly characters in the art work if one detects, as some scholars do, the features of Julius II in the High Priest Onias III.8 The Stanza D’Eliodoro and its first fresco The Explusion of Heliodorus is a milestone for its scale, its composition, its form, its treatment of subject, its color, its narrative power, and its graceful draughtmanship.
Raphael, The Mass of Bolsena, c. 1512 Fresco 21’8” Stanza d’Eliodoro, Vatican, Rome.
The fresco of The Mass of Bolsena depicts a 13th century miracle connected to the Eucharist when a traveling priest, doubting the Real Presence of Jesus in the consecrated host, is given proof of its reality when the altar cloth he uses for Mass becomes stained with blood from the Host. The cloth relic was revered by Julius II and housed in Orvieto Cathedral where it is today. From its inception, the five handsome youths in the bottom right section of the fresco have been admired for their sturdy monumentality perhaps influenced by Michelangelo as well as its colors and costumes showing Venetian influence. (Beck, pp. 100-101).
Raphael, The Mass of Bolsena, c. 1512 Fresco 21’8” Stanza d’Eliodoro, Vatican, Rome. DETAIL. Raphael, The Mass of Bolsena, c. 1512 Fresco 21’8” Stanza d’Eliodoro, Vatican, RomeDETAIL.Santi, Raffaello, dit Raphaël Rencontre entre Léon Ier et Attila 1512/1513 LOUVRE https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020101100 – retrieved September 4, 2024.Raphael, The Liberation of Saint Peter From Prison, 1512-13, Fresco, 22’8” at base. Stanza d’Eliodoro, Vatican, Rome.
San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome (“St. Peter in Chains”) was Julius II’s titular church when he was a cardinal before becoming pope. It was also his uncle’s church before him, pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484). Pope Julius II made pilgrimage to the church in 1512 after the French evacuated from Italy. The liberation in the title of Raphael’s fresco probably refers to that of the Papal States with St. Peter taking on the physical characteristics of Julius II. The fresco was being painted during a year when the pope was dying which occurred in February 1513. Raphael’s use of light in the fresco is probably the boldest in art taking place at night in the whole of Renaissance art. (Beck, pp. 102-3).
Raphael, The Liberation of Saint Peter From Prison, 1512-13, Fresco, 22’8” at base. Stanza d’Eliodoro, Vatican, Rome.
Stanza dell’Incendio del Borgo
Raphael, The Fire in the Borgo, 1514-15, fresco, 22’1″ at base, Stanza dell’ Incendio, Vatican, Rome.
The name of the room comes from this fresco which Raphael began work on in the summer of 1514. It depicts a newly imagined historical event from the mid-9th century when a fire broke out in Rome. The pope (Leo IV) is seen giving a blessing from the balcony of Old St. Peter’s which, the story goes, tamped down the flames. In the meantime, Raphael depicted the event’s panic and drama among its foreground figures in its throes. Once more Raphael is re-inventing his art from only a couple of years earlier. As Raphael continued the practice of borrowing certain figures and themes from previous frescos, the overall classical style of the Segnatura and Eliodoro frescos are remarkably more spatially complex and intriguing in The Fire in the Borgo. Raphael absorbed what Rome offered: from Michelangelo’s latest art to the city’s ancient and contemporary architecture. The Ionic columns of Old St. Peter’s are accurately rendered as are the building fragment of Corinthian columns. (Beck, p. 110).
Raphael, the Fire in the Borgo, 1514-15, fresco, 22’1″ at base, Stanza dell’ Incendio, Vatican, Rome. DETAIL.
RAPHAEL THE PORTRAITIST
Four Rooms; Four Popes.
The popes responsible for commissioning, funding, and overseeing the completion of the Raphael Rooms amounted to three out of four consecutive reigns: Pope Julius II (r. 1503–1513) originated the commission. Under Julius, Raphael painted the Stanza della Segnatura and began the Stanza di Eliodoro. Julius II is buried in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Pope Leo X (r. 1513–1521) continued the project, keeping Raphael on as the chief Vatican artist. He oversaw the completion of the Stanza di Eliodoro, the Stanza dell’Incendio del Borgo, and the planning for the Sala di Costantino.
Pope Adrian VI, a Dutchman, then reigned after Leo X for a little over one year and eight months but halted work on the project. Adrian VI is buried in Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome.
Finally Pope Clement VII (r. 1523–1534), Like Leo X, another Medici pope, finished the Sala di Costantino funded the late Raphael’s workshop assistants led by Giulio Romanoin 1524. Both Pope Leo X and Pope Clement VII are buried directly across from one another inside the choir of the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.
Pope Julius II, Raphael, 1511-12.
Giuliano della Rovere (1443-1513) was described by Machiavelli in his works as an ideal prince. Becoming pope in 1503, he took the name Julius II in honor of Julius Caesar and was nicknamed the Warrior Pope. In 1506 Julius II organized the famous Swiss Guard for his personal protection and established the Vatican Museums. He was also the pope who instigated the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica that exists today. The pope increased the power of the Papal States and, in 1508, he commissioned the Raphael Rooms and Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel. It was Julius II who also established the first bishoprics in the New World. Although the Tomb of Pope Julius II with its famous sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo is in San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, the ensemble, extensively abbreviated than originally planned, was not finished until 1545, long after Julius II’s death in 1520. In fact, Julius II is buried in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Raphael, Portrait of Leo X and Two cardinals, 1517-18, oil on panel, 60 5/8 x 46 7/8” Uffizi Gallery Florence
This was an important group portrait commission for Raphael: the current Pope Leo X Medici (1513-1521) seated by his cousins, Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici on the left and Luigi de’ Rossi on the right. Giulio de’ Medici was soon to become the future pope Clement VII (1523-1534). Though highly individualized, Raphael captures a family resemblance between these Medici who were then the most powerful family in Italy and all about the same age. In 1517 Cardinal Giulio was an important art patron and had commissioned Raphael to do The Transfiguration, his last painting. Raphael demonstrates a wide range of artistic experience and skills so to pull any tool he needs for a successful outcome of any commission. In Urbino Raphael had been exposed to Flemish art and deploys its detailed technique in the bell and manuscript which 42-year-old Leo X uses a magnifier to see. The setting of the monumental portrait, in a room in the Vatican, is subtly captured by way of Flemish art ingenuity. The doorknob in front of cardinal Luigi de’ Rossi shows the reflection of an open window while the cape and biretta of the pope are highly detailed by the artist in its natural light. The Portrait of Leo X and Two Cardinals is considered the greatest group portrait of the 16th century. (Beck, pp. 120-121)
Raphael’s Garvagh Madonna (also known as the Aldobrandini Madonna) was painted in Rome between 1509–1511.Though its commsiion is lost to history it was a cabinet painting for private devotion and likely commissioned by a Roman aristocrat or paper courtier. The focal point is the pink carnation (dianthus) that the infant John the Baptist is handing to the Christ Child. The flower signifies Divine Love and the Passion of Christ. By the late 16th century, it entered the collection of the aristocratic Aldobrandini family in Rome and displayed in their apartments and at the Villa Borghese. During Napoleon’s invasion of Italy in 1799, an art dealer named Alexander Day acquired the painting and smuggled it to London.The painting was purchased in 1818 by the English nobleman George Canning, 1st Lord Garvagh and hidden for the next almost 50 years. In 1865 it was purchased by the National Gallery in London.
Raphael was working on the frescos in the Vatican Palace when he painted this oil on panel portrait of a “Young Cardinal.” The sitter is not known though it likely is Cardinal Francesco Alidosi (1455-1511). Cdl. Alidosi was an influential diplomat and military leader and a favorite of Julius II (1503-1513). The sitter’s expression and pose of a resting arm on the edge of the painting’s base and the slight turn of the body seems to owe much to Leonardo da Vinci. The body is monumental compared to a placid and yet almost inscrutable slightly smaller head whose depiction, while directly observed, is somewhat idealized. When Della Rovere was elected as Pope Julius II in 1503, Alidosi became his secretary and primary collaborator. He was appointed papal chamberlain and then treasurer. Though labeled “unholy” by Venetian cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), Cld. Alidosi helped guide the vocation of Bl. Elena Duglioli dall’ Olio (1472-1520), an Italian aristocrat, who wanted to be a Poor Clare nun but was forced to marry by her family and for whose endowed chapel in Bologna Raphael painted an altarpiece. In 1504 Alidosi became a bishop whose sees ranged up and down all of Italy from Mileto in 1504 and Pavia in 1505. He occupied the seat of Pavia until he was murdered in broad daylight in 1511. There were accusations traded back and forth that Cdl. Alidosi was a traitor at a time when the French occupied parts of Italy among its warring Italian families. The independently powerful pope acted to protect his favorite as long as possible. About Alidosi one historian noted: ”A favorite has no friends.” There were many unconcerned witnesses to the brutal crime whose attack included blows that split his head in two. (Beck, pp. 92-93; Herbert M. Vaughan, B.A., The Medici Popes (Leo X and Clement VII), Methuen & Co., London, 1910, p. 64-65; “Alidosi, Francesco, detto il Cardinal di Pavia”. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani – Volume 2 (in Italian). Treccani. 1960.)
Raphael, La Donna Velata, c. 1514, oil on canvas, 33 ½ x 25 ¼” Pitti Gallery, Florence.
In La Donna Velata and Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, Raphael, the master portraitist, present near ideal depictions. Both portraits are of almost identical dimensions. The model Raphael used for La Donna Velata he used in other artworks of this period, including The Sistine Madonna. By the mid 1510s these portraits have become gentler in their modeling than the tight, detailed study of corporeal features done before. Raphael begins a display of a mastery of forms and colors that had great influence on future artists such as Rubens and Rembrandt. However, Raphael’s painting does not forgo his mastery of drawing exampled in the female sitter’s sleeve or the overall nobility of the male sitter. (Beck, pp. 108-09; 116-17).
Portrait of Bindo Altoviti, painted circa 1515, presents its subject in a dramatic and highly original pose: a three-quarter back view with his head turned sharply over his shoulder to meet the viewer’s gaze. Bindo Altoviti (1491-1557) was a young, immensely wealthy and politically influential Florentine banker based in Rome. Among the most important patrons of the High Renaissance, he maintained close relationships with Raphael, Michelangelo, and Benvenuto Cellini. A passionate supporter of the arts, he was also a determined political opponent of the Medici family.
The striking twist of Altoviti’s body imbues the portrait with an unusual sense of movement and psychological immediacy. Raphael employs sfumato, particularly around the jawline, eyes, and flowing golden-brown curls, to create subtle transitions of light and shadow that enhance the figure’s sculptural presence. Soft illumination highlights the sitter’s youthful features against a rich dark-green background, while his hand rests lightly against his chest, drawing attention to the prominent gold ring on his finger. His attire, a sumptuous blue mantle draped over a dark tunic, conveys exceptional wealth and social standing while avoiding overt ostentation.
Raphael, The Way to Calvary (Lo Spasimo), 1516-17, oil on canvas, 10 ½ x 7’ 6 1/2” The Prado Madrid.
Raphael’s Christ Falling on the Way to Calvary (famously known in Italian as Lo Spasimo di Sicilia) was painted around 1516-1517, originally on panel before later being transferred to canvas. The painting captures the dramatic moment when Christ falls beneath the Cross and turns to look directly at his mother, who swoons in grief (the spasimo). She is supported by a group of weeping women, including Mary Magdalene, who kneels in the lower right foreground. Raphael fills the composition with intense movement and emotional tension. On the left, Roman soldiers and executioners tug brutally at ropes and force Christ onward, while Simon of Cyrene struggles to lift the heavy wooden cross. In the distance, a winding road leads toward Calvary, where other crosses are already being prepared beneath a turbulent sky.
The painting was commissioned by Jacopo Basilio for the new church of Santa Maria dello Spasimo in Palermo, Sicily. Although the church itself was never completed, Raphael’s masterpiece embarked on a remarkable journey. En route to Sicily, the ship carrying the work was wrecked at sea, yet the carefully packed painting somehow washed ashore near Genoa unharmed. It took the direct intervention of Pope Leo X to compel the Genoese authorities to surrender the masterpiece to its rightful owners in Palermo.
In 1661, the painting was acquired by the Spanish Viceroy of Sicily on behalf of King Philip IV of Spain, an avid collector of Raphael’s works. Transported to Madrid, it was installed in the royal chapel. During the Napoleonic Wars, French troops seized the painting and carried it to Paris, where restorers transferred it from panel to canvas. Following Napoleon’s defeat, the work was returned to Spain, where it eventually entered the collection of the Museo del Prado, its home today. The painting reflects Raphael´s interest in the depiction of extreme physical and psychological states. https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/christ-falls-on-the-way-to-calvary/870c8293-1691-4a90-88ff-b554a2bc3fe8?searchid=d42d76c7-eb9f-501b-f628-d03605a6ca9c – retrieved September 4, 2024.
Raphael, The Alba Madonna, c. 1511, oil on canvas (transferred from panel), diameter 37 ¼” National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Raphael’s major commissions for papal and aristocratic patrons did not interrupt his sustained engagement with the Madonna theme, a subject he had refined since his years in Umbria and Florence. The Alba Madonna exemplifies this continuity. The Virgin is presented as a Virgin of Humility, seated directly on the ground, her pose reinforcing the theological emphasis on Christ’s lowly Incarnation. She wears a rose‑pink gown beneath a topaz‑blue mantle, her hair drawn back from her face, and one finger marking a page in the book resting on her lap.
The Virgin occupies the dominant share of the tondo’s surface, receiving the young John the Baptist as he approaches with flowers gathered in the fold of his garment — a visual shorthand for his role as the forerunner who prepares and presents Christ to the world. All three figures direct their attention toward the small cross held by the Christ Child, a sign of his identity as the Lamb of God and of the sacrificial destiny that defines his mission.
Raphael integrates figure and format with characteristic finesse: the Madonna’s rounded features and gently curving posture echo the circular panel on which the scene is painted. The background opens onto an expansive plain leading to a turquoise body of water, with distant mountains rendered in deeper blue beneath a luminous sky, establishing a serene atmospheric recession typical of Raphael’s mature style. (Roger & Penny, p. 88.) https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.26.html – retrieved September 4, 2024.
Raphael, Galatea, c. 1512, fresco, 9’8 1/8” x 7’4”, Villa farnesina, Rome.
Raphael took a poem by Florentine poet Poliziano (1454-1494) for inspiration for this fresco. The poet gives a detailed description of the Palace of Venus. Galatea is described as riding on the sea in a chariot pulled by a pair of dolphins whose reins she holds. Around her is her entourage playing amorously in the sea. In 2007, the bodies of Poliziano and philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1464) were exhumed from Florence’s Church of San Marco to determine the causes of their deaths. Forensic tests showed that both men of letters likely were poisoned but it is only speculation as to why or by whom. (see – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6920443.stm – retrieved September 7, 2024). (Roger & Penny, p. 93).
Raphael, The Sistine Madonna, 1512-13, oil on canvas, 8’8” x 6’5”Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.
Raphael’s The Sistine Madonna was made for the high altar of a newly rebuilt church of Pope St. Sixtus (d. 257) in Piacenza, Italy. St. Sixtus kneels on a cloud before the Virgin and Christ Child with a hand over his chest. The saint is interceding for the worshippers of Piacenza to whom he gestures outward with his other hand. Opposite is St. Barbara, patron of soldiers, with the symbol of a tower behind her. (Roger & Penny p. 128)
Raphael, The S. Cecilia Altarpiece, 1513-14, oil on canvas, 86 ½ x 53 ½” The National Gallery of Bologna (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna).
In TheS. Cecilia Altarpiece Raphael depicts St. Cecilia with an organetto slipping from her hands as she looks skyward to the preferred sound of heavenly music. Also included are Sts. Paul, John the Evangelist, Augustine and Mary Magdalene. It was an altarpiece for a chapel in S. Giovanni in Monte in Bologna founded by Elena Duglioli dall’ Olio (1472-1520). The Italian aristocrat wanted to become a Poor Clare nun. Though forced to marry by her family, she persuaded her husband not to consummate the marriage. This act of chastity was attributed to her devotion to St. John the Evangelist, patron of virginity, and St. Cecilia. Elena’s benefactor in the enterprise of her religious vocation was influential Cardinal Alidosi. Elena died on September 23, 1520, and her remains are incorrupt in the church of San Giovanni in Monte. In 1828 she was beatified by Pope Leo XII (1760-1829). Her feast day is September 23. (Roger & Penny, pp. 144-146).
Raphael, The S. Cecilia Altarpiece, 1513-14, oil on canvas, 86 ½ x 53 ½” The National Gallery of Bologna (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna).Raphael, Madonna della Sedia (The Madonna of the Chair), 1514-15, Oil on Panel, diameter 28” Pitti Gallery, Florence.
Raphael’s tondo Madonna della Seggiola (Madonna della Sedia or Madonna of the Chair) was painted in Rome around 1513-1514. Its title derives from the ornate gilded chair (seggiola) on which the Virgin sits, a detail that reflects the courtly refinement of Raphael’s Roman years under Pope Leo X. The painting is celebrated for its profound tenderness and maternal warmth: Mary draws the Christ Child closely to her while the young Saint John the Baptist gazes upward in adoration, his hands clasped in prayer and a delicate reed cross foreshadowing the Crucifixion. Unusually, Mary looks directly out at the viewer with an intense and knowing expression, inviting us into what might otherwise seem a private family moment. During the Napoleonic Wars, the painting was seized by French forces in 1799 and taken to Paris, where it was admired as one of the finest treasures in Napoleon’s collection. Following Napoleon’s defeat, it was returned safely to Florence in 1815.
Raphael, Portrait of a Nude woman (“Fornarina”), oil on panel, c. 1518, 85 x 80cm, galleria Nazionale ( Palazzo Barberini), Rome.
Raphael’s Secret Muse: La Fornarina and the Artist’s Great Love
Raphael’s famously intimate and sensual masterpiece, La Fornarina (The Baker’s Daughter), was painted around 1518-1520, during the final years of the artist’s life. The half-nude sitter is widely identified as Margarita Luti, believed to have been Raphael’s secret longtime mistress and the great love of his life.
A Forbidden Romance
Although Raphael was officially engaged to Maria Bibbiena, the niece of a powerful Vatican cardinal, the artist repeatedly postponed the marriage. Contemporary accounts suggest that his devotion to Margarita overshadowed all other personal and sometimes professional commitments. The Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote that Raphael’s passion for Margarita was so consuming that it distracted him from some of his most important artistic commissions, including work for the Vatican.
Margarita as Venus
Margarita’s pose, with one hand resting lightly on her breast and the other across her lap, deliberately echoes the ancient Venus Pudica (“Modest Venus”) type of classical Greco-Roman sculpture. Through this visual reference, Raphael transformed his working-class lover into Venus, the goddess of love, elevating her from earthly companion to idealized beauty.
Her appearance is rich with symbolic details. She wears an exotic striped silk turban adorned with a delicate pearl ornament. The pearl, margherita in Italian, serves as a playful visual pun on her first name. Such references suggest that the painting was not merely a portrait but an intensely personal tribute.
A Private Declaration of Love
Unlike Raphael’s public commissions, La Fornarina appears to have been a private work, likely kept within the artist’s workshop rather than displayed for patrons. One of the painting’s most striking details is the dark blue and gold band encircling Margarita’s upper left arm. Inscribed with the words “RAPHAEL URBINAS” (“Raphael of Urbino”), the band functions almost like a signature worn on the body of the beloved. Rather than simply identifying the artist, it creates a profound connection between painter and sitter, suggesting a mutual bond that transcends the conventions of portraiture.
The Hidden Wedding Ring
Modern scientific analysis and X-ray examinations of the painting have revealed a remarkable hidden history. Beneath the visible paint layers, conservators discovered that Margarita originally wore a large gold wedding ring on the third finger of her left hand. The surrounding landscape also once contained myrtle and laurel, traditional Renaissance symbols associated with marriage, fidelity, and enduring love.
These discoveries have fueled longstanding speculation that Raphael and Margarita may have entered into a secret union, or at the very least that Raphael wished to portray her as his wife rather than merely his mistress.
The Cover-Up After Raphael’s Death
After Raphael’s sudden death in 1520, his workshop assistants, most notably Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni, altered the painting. The wedding ring was painted over, and portions of the symbolic background were modified or removed.
Many scholars believe these changes were intended to protect Raphael’s posthumous reputation and avoid a potentially damaging scandal. Publicly, the artist was known as the unmarried fiancé of a powerful cardinal’s niece. Evidence of a secret marriage or romantic attachment to a baker’s daughter would have embarrassed both elite Vatican families and Raphael’s estate during a sensitive period following his death.
As a result, La Fornarina survives not only as one of the Renaissance’s most beautiful portraits but also as one of its most intriguing love stories, a work in which a Renaissance artist’s passion, symbolism, and secrecy are woven beneath the surface of the paint itself.
Raphael, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (Luke 5: 1-11), 1514-15, Tempera on paper, 11’10” x 13’2” Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The Raphael Cartoons are designs for tapestries and were commissioned by Pope Leo X (1513-21) shortly after his election in 1513. The tapestries were intended to hang in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, built by Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84). The decoration of the chapel under Sixtus addressed the lives of Moses and Christ. The tapestries continued this theme, illustrating scenes from the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul.
The Visitation was commissioned by Giovanni Branconio, the Apostolic Protonotary, at the behest of his father, Marino Branconio, for the family chapel at the church of San Silvestre de Aquila. Marino´s choice of subject matter was undoubtedly guided by the fact that his wife was named Elizabeth and his son, John. In 1655, this work was acquired by Felipe IV (1605-1665), who deposited it at El Escorial. It entered the Prado Museum in 1837.
Raphael, The Holy Family of Francis I. 1518 Oil on canvas 81 ½ x 55 1/8” The Louvre Paris.
Raphael’s grand late masterpiece, The Holy Family of Francis I (also known as The Great Holy Family), was painted in 1518 during his Roman period. At the center of the composition, the infant Christ springs from his cradle into the embrace of his mother, the Virgin Mary. Beside her, Saint Elizabeth supports her young son, Saint John the Baptist, whose hands are clasped in prayer as his gaze points to Jesus. Two angels join the scene, one holding a crown of flowers above Mary’s head, symbolizing her role as the Queen of Heaven. A pensive, heavy-lidded Saint Joseph leans on his hand, quietly contemplating the gathering and awaiting the Holy Family’s next move.
More saccharine than Raphael’s other work, the painting reflects his growing attraction to the monumental, proto-Mannerist tendencies inspired by Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. It also bears the mark of Raphael’s increasingly busy workshop, with most of it executed by his assistant Giulio Romano. Commissioned by Pope Leo X as a diplomatic gift for King Francis I of France and Queen Claude, the painting was sent to the French royal court at Fontainebleau in 1518. The gift formed part of the Vatican’s broader effort to cultivate French goodwill and maintain a political counterweight to the growing power of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Raphael, The Transfiguration, 1518-20, oil on panel, 13’3 ¾ x 9’1 ½” Pinacoteca, Vatican, Rome.
Raphael died in April 1520 while working on The Transfiguration. Although most of the painting was already complete, his sudden passing marked the abrupt end of a brilliant but short career—Raphael was only 37 years old. Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, the future Pope Clement VII, had commissioned the work for the Cathedral of Narbonne in France, but following the artist’s untimely death, it was instead displayed at his funeral in the Pantheon.
During its creation, the project was fueled by intense artistic rivalry. Sebastiano del Piombo, who was mentored by Michelangelo in Florence, was simultaneously producing The Raising of Lazarus for the exact same cathedral, creating a direct competition for Raphael’s work. Today, Sebastiano’s anxious letters to Michelangelo serve as our primary historical record for the progress and development of Raphael’s painting.
Initially, Raphael planned to depict only the mountaintop Transfiguration. This episode is detailed in the Synoptic Gospels but completely omitted from the Gospel of John. This omission is particularly notable because Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record that John was personally present for the magnificent event, alongside Peter and James the Greater. Ultimately, John’s omission makes thematic sense: while the Synoptic writers use the Transfiguration as a dramatic, mid-narrative revelation of Jesus’s heavenly nature, John’s entire Gospel establishes that exact divine premise right from its opening verses.
Raphael’s depiction ultimately became the definitive template for how the event on Mount Tabor has been popularly imagined ever since. He captured Christ rising majestically into the air, His face and clothes turned a dazzling white, elevated above Moses and Elijah, whom the Gospels describe Jesus as being in conversation with. Below them, the three chosen Apostles careen in various prostrations of overwhelming wonderment, shielding themselves from the brilliant light.
Raphael famously expanded the traditional scene to include the scriptural episode that immediately follows: the story of a demoniac boy whom the remaining Apostles fail to heal. In the biblical account, Christ descends the mountain after His transfiguration and cures the child, who appears here frantically gesturing in the lower right corner. In the composition, the divine peace of the Transfiguration sits elevated and farther back from this earthly, chaotic turmoil below. On the left side of the canvas, two figures—identified as the patron saints of Narbonne—can be seen making their way up the mountain to pay homage.
This inclusion was a nod to the patrons, if not a guarantee of Raphael’s full fee. As the Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari famously noted, Raphael lived more like a prince than a painter. His lifestyle was expensive, and Giulio Romano, one of Raphael’s chief artistic and financial heirs, eventually had to sue the benefactors in 1522 to secure the final payment for the masterpiece.
Debate continues among art historians over exactly how much of Raphael’s studio executed the final canvas, particularly in the wake of his sudden death. Even so, it is clear the workshop assisted extensively during Raphael’s lifetime, as his highly productive working method required. Nevertheless, the core invention, the preparatory drawings, and the vast majority of the brushwork were distinctly Raphael’s own. Art historians Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny note that for this final painting, Raphael looked back to the very beginning of his career, modeling many of the expressive heads in The Transfiguration after Leonardo da Vinci’s unfinished 1481 masterpiece, The Adoration of the Magi.
Just as in the Gospel narrative, light drives the artistic coloration, invention, and emotion of the painting. A blinding, heavenly radiance engulfs Peter, James, and John at the top, while a second, much sharper earthly light isolates the expressive faces, hands, and frantic gestures from deep shadows below. This complex illumination and intense contrast became an essential touchstone for later, highly influential Baroque painters, most notably Caravaggio. Vasari remarkably notes that when Raphael passed away, the loss plunged the entire papal court into deep, unmitigated grief, so much so that the Pope quite openly and bitterly wept at the tragic passing of this noble craftsman.
Conclusion
With Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, Raphael became one of the defining figures of the High Renaissance. His achievement lay not only in individual masterpieces but in his ability to unite classical ideals, Christian theology, portraiture, architecture, and human emotion into a harmonious artistic vision that shaped the course of Western art for centuries.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, translated by George Bull (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1965) pages 316-18.
2. Ibid., page 318 and Edizioni Musei Vaticani, Michelangelo and Raphael in the Vatican, (Tipografia Vaticana, Città del Vaticano, 1995) page 169.
3. Vasari, Lives, pages 285 and 291.
4. Ibid., pages 299-302.
5. Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Raphael, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1983, page 113 and 17. Carlo Ludivico, Vatican Museums Rome, page 119
6. Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Raphael, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1983, page 117 and Vasari, Lives, page 301.
7. Frederick Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York, Third Edition, 1987, page 513.
8. New American Bible, (Catholic Book Publishing Company, New York) page 546 and 550; Beck, Raphael, page 98.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Brera Milan Great Museums of the World, Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Newsweek NY 1970 pp. 34
Pinakothek Munich Great Museums of the World, Roberto Salvini, et. al., Newsweek NY 1969 pp. 126
Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari, translated by George Bull, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1965, pages 316-18
Michelangelo and Raphael in the Vatican, Edizioni Musei Vaticani, Tipografia Vaticana, Città del Vaticano, 1995 p. 169
Raffaello. Franzese, Paolo (2008). Milano: Mondadori Arte.
Raphael, James H. Beck, harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1994.
Raphael, Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1983.
Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Volume 2, André Vauchez, Richard Barrie Dobson, Michael Lapidge, Chicago: Fitzroy, Dearborn, 2000.
History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Frederick Hartt, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York, Third Edition, 1987.
Raphael, Beck, James H., Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, 1994.
The Medici Popes (Leo X and Clement VII), Herbert M. Vaughan, B.A., Methuen & Co., London, 1908.
“Alidosi, Francesco, detto il Cardinal di Pavia”. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani – Volume 2. Treccani. 1960.
This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
Italian art evolved by constantly blending distinct cultural traditions—from Byzantine iconography and literary epics to Baroque drama—transforming traditional religious and narrative subject matter into deeply emotional, poetic, and atmospheric visual languages that transcended simple illustration.
Duccio Di Buoninsegna (c.1255-c.1319).
Duccio Di Buoninsegna (c.1255-c.1319), The Apparition of Jesus at the Closed Doors. The Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena, Italy.
The artistic tradition of the Sienese master, Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255-c. 1319) was based on older Greek painting. Duccio, however, was no less “modern” than Giotto (1266-1377). Giotto, who was trained by Cimabue (1240-1302), directed his creative artistry towards concrete reality whose perception derived from the artist’s thoughts and feelings of it. Duccio would achieve a similar but unique synthesis through and from a different direction.
Duccio modernized the older Greek style creating the painting styles of the Sienese school as well as all of early Renaissance painting. Duccio’s artwork is distinguished by his discriminating advance of the Byzantine Post-Hellenism tradition in Tuscany—and following his own encounter with Cimabue who gave the Sienese artist his first important commission in Florence in 1285 —in a masterly delicate way. This delicacy and discrimination are seen in Duccio’s elegant, often light and airy, compositions and rich colors.
Over the next almost 25 years Duccio learned and deployed the elements of various pictorial traditions that, by his constant intelligent blending, enriched them. Duccio’s style used the iconographic schemata of the ancient Oriental-Byzantine tradition including its glorious color and poetic composition along with the ultra-contemporary French and Gothic linear style. Duccio’s oeuvre epitomizes the artist’s temperament and taste as well as a lifetime of artistic education and culture.
Beyond its representation of an event in a scene, Duccio’s painting, not unlike Giotto’s histories, is raised to another level by some of its formal elements –- a figure, episode, or gesture -– into the artist’s magical world. This quality of Duccio’s art provides a textually clear and comprehensibly observed episode—such as of the Gospels— within a setting that is carefully observed and delineated—and with its totality imbued in finer artistic and aesthetic sensibilities.
The imminent drama manifested in Duccio’s iconography transcends its representational anecdote, even as figures or episodes of the Bible are easily recognizable. His artwork’s plasticity, with figures and surroundings in serene harmony, emanates a power whose message supersedes, or at least is contiguous to, the painting’s ostensible, usually religious, subject matter.
In the display of such a unique artistic quality, Duccio’s artwork functions in a dream-like and imaginatively timeless dimension—a unique poetical language—while it conveys an historical condition in any of his intentionally-varying episodes. Duccio’s carefully delineated religious scenes, softly and carefully conveyed, would characterize emerging Sienese painting and make religious painting exceedingly popular in Europe over the next 450 years. see – Giotto and His Contemporaries, Enzo Carli, trans. Susan Bellamy, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1958.
Benozzo Gozzoli (c. 1421-October 4, 1497).
Benozzo Gozzoli (c. 1421-October 4, 1497), Saint Anthony of Padua, 1450, Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Rome, Italy. In art, the saint’s iconography often depicts him with one or more of the following: a book, a heart, a flame, a lily, or the child Jesus.
Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) had a cult in Italy that grew around him quickly and continues to today. He was born with the name Ferdinand in the last decade of the 12th century in Lisbon, Portugal. His father was a high financial official in the king’s court and a knight under Alfonso II of Aragon. Young Ferdinand was educated at the cathedral school in Lisbon and, at 15 years old, became an Augustinian Canon regular in Lisbon. After two years he transferred to a house in Coimbra in part to get away from his well-to-do relatives who were constantly seeking after their promising progeny who had decided to become a Catholic religious and priest. At Coimbra Ferdinand studied at the monastery’s renown biblical studies school for eight years. Steeped in the scriptures he became a theological and scripture scholar of unparalleled high caliber. One day the young Augustinian canon was serving as guest master for the house in Coimbra when 5 Franciscans sent out from Assisi in Italy by St. Francis (1181-1226)– the order had been founded in 1209 – stopped on their way to the missions in in Morocco. Not soon after Anthony learned that all 5 of these zealous Franciscans were butchered in Morocco as martyrs as soon as they arrived there. Their bodies brought back to Coimbra for their funeral deeply moved Anthony who wanted to emulate these Franciscans’ active witness and he decided to become a Franciscan himself in order to take their place. His family, who had been wary of his becoming a scholarly Augustinian following a venerable old rule in nearby Coimbra, grew even more upset as their son who threw away a knight’s career at court now joined a fly by night ragtag group in far flung Italy founded by another rich kid named Francesco who also renounced wealth to focus on evangelical poverty following his brand-new skeletal rule based on a few bible verses. Ferdinand was determined in his inspirations and took the difficult path of leaving the Augustinian canons for the Franciscans and then insisting on leaving Portugal for the missions in Morocco. But Ferdinand’s ambitions were stymied – he fell ill and was ordered home. But the ship he was traveling on was caught in a storm that drove Anthony off course to Sicily. From there he took the long journey to Assisi where he met St. Francis and was present at the famous Chapter of Mats in 1221 that drew, perhaps symbolically, 5,000 brethren of the new order. Though highly educated among a group of mendicants whose founder was suspicious of book learning, Anthony disappeared into menial duties in a small hospice in Forli. But the Franciscans, many of them former sons of the wealthy themselves, recognized Anthony’s brilliant abilities and he was ordered to preach to the whole of Italy. Anthony of Padua became this great preacher and, later, famous worker of miracles. In a time of heresy and controversy throughout Christendom Anthony, who was gentle, poised, charming, intelligent, thoughtful, and deeply well-versed in theology and scripture, served as a personable and effective counterweight. From that point forward until his death, Anthony was active and always on the road from Italy’s south to the north of France. Townspeople and rural folk were positively responsive to his efforts and wherever Anthony went next, churches, plazas and surrounding countryside would be packed with people to hear his sermons. Speaking events would be advertised by word of mouth so that towns often declared a holiday in anticipation of his arrival so that everyone could go out to listen to Anthony. Anthony’s preeminent issue was on the corruption of the secular clergy which scandalized the church, the faithful in the pews, and the wider world to the detriment of the faith. During a time of the rise of cities and the bourgeoisie, as the hierarchical church progressively attached themselves to the bankers and such, Anthony inveighed against the society’s greed, its lust for elite luxuriant living, with its necessary exploitation of labor to maintain themselves at such an unfair level. Anthony called such social behavior “tyrannical.” At a synod in Bourges, France, in the presence of the bishop, Anthony called him out – “as for you with the mitre on your head” and proceeded to denounce his abuses in the diocese before a petrified and perhaps also thrilled audience. Anthony happened to be in Padua when he preached his last sermons – and thus his nomenclature. Miracles and stories have a Franciscan flavor -such as preaching to the fishes or a giant walnut tree unexpectedly providing sustenance and shade to a tired evangelizing preacher. After 10 years of constant travel and preaching, like the Franciscan founder who died blind and naked on the ground outside the Portiuncula in 1226 at 44 years old, Anthony’s body had worn out at an early age. He was 36 years old. In the spring of 1231, his health deteriorated, he took a period of rest and prayer in a small hermitage in Camposampiero close to Padua. His health did not recover and he asked to return to St. Mary’s in Padua. As he was transported to the city in an ox cart he got as far Arcella, just opposite the city, where he died in a convent of Poor Clares. Though his cult hails him as a miracle worker — at his canonization 56 were recorded -– only one occurred in Anthony’s lifetime. Anthony‘s reputation, who was called the “hammer of the heretics” by his contemporaries, rests mainly on his persuasive preaching filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit. Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) canonized Anthony less than a year after his death – faster than St. Francis himself – as this once rich kid with excellent theological and biblical training became the patron saint of losing things and the illiterate. On January 16, 1946, Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) declared Anthony a doctor of the church. In art, the saint’s iconography often depicts him with one or more of the following: a book, a heart, a flame, a lily, or the child Jesus. see – https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5118/anthony_of_padua – retrieved June 13, 2025. The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary, edited by John Coulson, Guild Press, New York, 1957, pp.73-76.
Dosso Dossi (c. 1489-1542)– whose actual name was Giovanni de Lutero–was an Italian Renaissance painter who belonged to the School of Ferrara. Among scores of artists who painted mainly in the Venetian style influenced by Giorgione (c. 1477-1510), Dosso Dossi dominated the school that maintained its tradition of painterly artificiality.
Melissa is Dosso Dossi’s masterpiece: a benign personage in the Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso (1516) of Ludovico Ariosto (1574-1533). The enchantress frees humans from the black arts of the wicked sorceress Alcina. The painting depicts Melissa at the moment she burns the seals and spells of Alcina and liberates two men from the tree trunks.
The realistic dog is certainly a human being under Alcina’s spell who will be liberated by Melissa and take up again the suit of armor he watches earnestly. The trees are stylized, artificially-lighted elements – that is, Giorgionesque – that provide a magical setting for the poem’s characters.
The figure of Melissa is draped in a fringed red-and-gold-brocaded robe and enriched by Titianesque glazes. She is particularly alluring in a sparkling gold and green setting moored by meticulously and softly portrayed meadows, background figures, and distant city towers.
SOURCE: History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Third Edition, Frederick Hartt, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1987. A Dictionary of Art and Artists, Peter and Linda Murray, Penguin Books; Revised,1998. Italian Paintings of the Sixteenth Century, Allan Braham, The National Gallery, London (William Collins), 1985.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770).
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), The Immaculate Conception, 1767-1769, oil on canvas, 152x 279 cm, Prado, Madrid. 88% 7.88 mb
Tiepolo depicts Mary with proud, almost sculptural, beauty of a human being free from original sin from the moment of her conception. Mary stands as a fully mature woman who is triumphant over the tempter, the serpent, that slithers and writhes itself across the globe. Mary is surrounded by cherubim with her halo pictured as a circle of stars, usually 12 in number, though some here are implicitly hidden from view. In chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 12: 1) stands against the Dragon who is about “to devour her child when she gave birth” (Rev. 12: 4). That Biblical woman has been identified with Mary, particularly as The Immaculate Conception. The dove that hovers above her in the painting represents the Holy Spirit who emanates from the Father and the Son and rests on Mary fundamentally at her Annunciation (Luke 1) which leads to the birth of Jesus and at Pentecost (Acts 2) which is the birth of the Christian Church. Augmented by roses and lilies, Mary is clothed in her traditional symbolic colors representing her virginal purity (white) as she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit, her role as the sinless human Mother of God (red), her character of fidelity, truth and spiritual serenity (blue), and the glory of her birth as The Immaculate Conception and crowning as Queen of Heaven following her Assumption (gold). Though its dogma was not settled definitively until 1854 by Pope Pius IX (reign, 1846-1878), The Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8th) was on the Church calendar as early as 1708 and a popular subject for Catholic Church art throughout the 18th century. Tiepolo was invited to Madrid in 1762 by Charles III (1716-1788). The artist was accompanied to Spain by his sons, Domenico and Lorenzo, and immediately began the frescoes in the Royal Palace that he finished in 1766. His next commission was for altar paintings, seven in number, for the new Franciscan Convent of San Pascual in Aranjuez, a Royal seat, including The Immaculate Conception. As soon as the series of paintings were finished in 1769, they were considered passé as Tiepolo’s late Baroque Rococo style had given way to the rise of neo-classicism as the next new thing that took hold of Carlos III, Europe and beyond to the United States into the first quarter of the 19th century. Tiepolo, who died in 1770, wasn’t around to see his church paintings fragmented and stored away and replaced by neo-classical artwork of the same subjects by another artist. However, The Immaculate Conception survived intact as King Carlos III ‘s confessor, the powerful Franciscan bishop Joaquín de Eleta (1707-1788) who, holding sway over artistic commissions, favored depictions of The Immaculate Conception as one of his important subjects that shaped late 18th century Spain’s visual culture. Tiepolo’s emotional and elegant version, which he signed, was conserved as a masterful contrast to neo-classicism’s colder rationality. The painting has been in the Prado since 1828 – Mary not content with being relegated to a storage closet – while a preparatory drawing that exists for the artwork made its way into the picture collection of the Lords Kinnaird in London. See- A Basic Guide to The Prado, J. Rogelio Buendia, translated by Patricia S. Parrent, Silex, 1973, pp. 240-241.
Guercino (1591-1666).
Guercino (1591-1666), Christ and the Woman of Samaria, c. 1640–1641, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
