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: 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.
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This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
