Raphael Sanzio (originally Santi, family from Colbordolo)

RAPHAEL SANZIO (originally Santi, family from Colbordolo). - Painter and architect, b. at Urbino on 6 April 1483 (probable date), to Giovanni Santi, a modest painter and versifier (d. 1494), and to Magia Ciarla. He died at Rome on 6 April 1520 at the age of 37, and was buried in the Pantheon, where his tomb, adorned with a Latin distich attributed to Tebaldeo, may still be seen.

Having learned the rudiments of the art from his father (a pupil and friend of Melozzo da Forlì), R. was soon placed in the workshop of Pietro Vannucci (known as Perugino) at Perugia, becoming within a short time the best collaborator of that much-sought-after artist (frescoes of the Cambio, Perugia, 1499). Around 1500, R., by then a "magister," began to work on his own. The principal and certain works of these years of his debut are: the small panels of the Dream of the Knight (London, National Gallery, where the cartoon is also preserved, c. 1500), those of the Three Graces (Chantilly, Musée Condé, same date), of St. George (Paris, Louvre, drawings at Florence, Uffizi, c. 1500-1502) and of St. Michael (ibid., same date), as well as the Madonna of the Book (Leningrad, Hermitage, same date) and another St. George (Washington, National Gallery). In these paintings, of a still timid grace, the Umbrian formal language seems to vanish like a chrysalis under the inner pressure of the figures it clothes, incapable of expressing all the ideal realism toward which the Raphaelesque vision tends and in which the Renaissance recognized the most difficult secret of the ancient art to be restored.

From the same period, but unfortunately for the most part lost, is the great altarpiece with the Coronation of St. Nicholas of Tolentino (fragments at Brescia, Pinacoteca Martinengo, and at Naples, Museo Nazionale), executed in collaboration with Evangelista di Pian di Meleto, a pupil of Giovanni Santi (contract of 10 Dec. 1500). A partial copy of the lost original is preserved in the Galleria civica of Città di Castello. His last paintings in the manner of Perugino are the Coronation of the Virgin

(Vatican, Pinacoteca, 1503) with its predella in an even more evolved and individual style; the Crucifix (London, National Gallery, signed, same date), for S. Domenico in Città di Castello, and the masterpiece of his adolescence: the Marriage of the Virgin (Milan, Brera, signed and dated 1504), a free interpretation of a scheme by Vannucci (the Marriage of the Virgin in the Museum of Caen), "corrected" by R. in the liveliness of the figures, in the balanced grace of the composition and in the harmony of the architectural background, so as to make quite evident how the genius of the disciple took its start from the limit barely reached by the talent of the master.

Of essential importance for the spiritual formation of R. and for that intuitive understanding of the humanistic world which he would reveal in the frescoes of the Segnatura, was his stay in Urbino, where he had returned in 1504 and where he frequented the court of Guidobaldo of Montefeltro, a literary cenacle to which some of the best minds of the time resorted, such as Bembo, Bibbiena, Sadoleto and above all Baldassar Castiglione, who celebrated those gatherings in his Book of the Courtier and became one of the most faithful friends and advisers of Sanzio.

At the end of 1504, the young artist is in Florence, where he has the revelation of the new sixteenth-century style before the famous cartoons of the Battles drawn in competition by Leonardo and by Michelangelo in the Palazzo Vecchio. His temperament, fundamentally and genially eclectic, absorbs and amalgamates the teaching of the magical "sfumato" of Vinci and of the sculptural painting of Buonarroti and seeks to make his own the serene eurhythmy of the altarpieces of Bartolomeo della Porta. The first work of R.'s "second manner," born from this new experience, is the Entombment (Rome, Galleria Borghese, signed and dated 1507; the predella with the Theological Virtues is in the Vatican Pinacoteca), commissioned from him by Atalanta Baglioni for the church of the Franciscans in Perugia. This panel was completed on R.'s return to that city, but it had been begun much earlier and shows in the kneeling woman who supports the Virgin a clear reminiscence of the Madonna in Michelangelo's Doni Tondo. It is interesting to note how the cold composure of the scene betrays Sanzio's scant inclination to treat tragic subjects. From the Florentine period date some of R.'s most universally celebrated paintings, such as the portraits of Angelo and Maddalena Doni (both in Florence, Pitti, ca. 1505), where there appears, in the second, the evident influence of Leonardo's Mona Lisa, the so-called Donna gravida (ibid., same date) and some of his most gentle Madonnas: the hieratic one of the Grand Duke (ibid., same date), the one of the Goldfinch (Florence, Uffizi, same date), idyllic, and finally the one known by the name of La Belle Jardinière (Paris, Louvre, signed and dated 1507), "a free application of the teaching of Leonardo and of the example of Michelangelo" (Fischel).

The most important date in R.'s life, that of his coming to Rome, is by now certain thanks to a document found by C. Cecchelli and published by V. Golzio (R., Città del Vaticano 1936, p. 270). It is a receipt of payment for the frescoes of the Segnatura, of 13 Jan. 1509. R. was therefore in Rome from the last months of the preceding year. Introduced by his fellow-countryman Bramante, architect of the Sacred Palaces, to the court of Julius II, he was judged according to his worth by this great connoisseur of geniuses. Although he was barely twenty-five years old and, as Giovio says, nec adhuc stabili authoritate, he received the appointment as writer of the Brevi (4 Oct. 1509) and the commission to fresco ad praescriptum Julii Pontificis (Giovio) the Stanze or rooms of the Pope's new apartment in the very years in which Michelangelo, almost in competition with him, was painting the vault of the Sistine Chapel. In the Stanza della Segnatura (1508-11), destined originally to house the Library of Julius II, as the subjects of the paintings show, R. represented in historical form (in the wall frescoes), allegorical (in the small panels of the vault) and symbolic (in the medallions) the three supreme Ideas of the True (theological or revealed in the Disputation, philosophical or rational in the School of Athens), of the Good (in its subjective principle, the cardinal and theological Virtues, and in its objective manifestation: the Law, canonical in the fresco of the Decretals, beside the Disputation, and civil in that of the Pandects, beside the School of Athens) and finally of the Beautiful (in the Parnassus), according to the concepts of Christian Platonism then returned to vogue especially through the work of Marsilio Ficino.

The Disputation of the Sacrament shows the glory of the Church Triumphant which venerates in the beatific vision of Paradise the Most Holy Trinity (saints, prophets and angels around the central group of Christ, of the Virgin and of the Precursor, dominated by the majestic figure of the Eternal Father blessing, while the Dove of the Holy Spirit links the upper zone to the lower one), and its communion with the Church Militant depicted by a council of saints, pontiffs and doctors who, on earth in the apse of an unfinished basilica, adore the Divinity in the daily miracle of its Eucharistic presence. Numerous here are the portraits, among which stand out those of Dante, of Savonarola (half hidden), of Sixtus IV (in a golden cope), of Blessed Angelico, of Bramante and of Julius II (St. Gregory the Great, according to Hart). This composition, already so fully sixteenth-century in its monumental architecture, nevertheless shows in its details an evident stylistic and technical unevenness and not a few echoes of R.'s original Umbrian manner (the use of gold and of relief stucco) which are, however, not found in the earlier Madonna of the Grand Duke or in La Belle Jardinière, a clear sign of his dismay, rapidly overcome, before the importance of the task entrusted to his young powers. As can well be seen, the traditional name given to this fresco in the seventeenth century (and derived from a misunderstood reading of Vasari) is erroneous, whereas that of Triumph of the Church would have been far more appropriate to express its concept.

The School of Athens (on the opposite wall) shows an ideal gathering of the most famous philosophers and scientists of ancient Greece, assembled around Plato and Aristotle, the two greatest representatives of classical thought (and Plato has the right), beneath the arches of a vast basilica designed by Bramante, almost as a prefiguration of the interior of the new Vatican Temple, then under construction. In the brief span of time that elapses between this and the preceding fresco, R. succeeded in conquering, even in the difficult technique of mural painting, complete mastery of the "Tuscan" manner, eliminating from his style every trace of uncertainty. Here too there are many portraits: Plato is Leonardo da Vinci, Euclid is Bramante, in the right-hand corner R. himself is seen beside Sodoma, Francesco Maria of Urbino is the young man dressed in white and Federico Gonzaga the little curly-haired boy. Particularly interesting is the portrait of Buonarroti seated alone in the foreground, in the guise of the pessimist Heraclitus, a powerful figure in the Michelangelesque manner derived from the Isaiah of the Sistine ceiling, partially uncovered in the year 1511, and added to the already finished fresco. To have thus placed the artists among the seekers of the True is an idea not Platonic but typical of the Renaissance and certainly due to R.'s initiative. On the neckline of the tunic of Bramante-Euclid one reads in golden letters the signature of Sanzio: R.V.S.M., that is, Raphael Urbinas Sua Manu.

The Parnassus shows at its center Apollo, who, intent on playing the lyre, extends his arm over the hill sacred to the Muses, who stand beside him with the three Graces and with the most famous poets of antiquity and of the Renaissance: Sappho, Petrarch, Ennius, Dante, Homer, Virgil, Castiglione, Boccaccio, Tebaldeo and others. Here R.'s genius brings to life in the form of art a theme that the Neo-Latin versifiers of humanism only rarely succeed in translating into poetry. And he does so with a "Cinquecento" assurance and ease that suggests a dating later than the School of Athens, but earlier than the lunette of the Virtues, where the Michelangelesque influence manifest in the interpolated figure of Heraclitus is much more perceptible.

The cardinal Virtues of Fortitude, Prudence and Temperance (Justice is depicted — according to Plato's thought, later taken up by St. Augustine — above, in the medallion, as the sum and guide of the other three), symbolize together with the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity (the little angels, according to Wind) the moral content, or subjective principle of the Law, represented in the two scenes at the sides of the window: the Delivery: Gregory IX receives the Decretals from St. Raymond of Peñafort (the Pope is a portrait of Julius II) and Tribonian delivers the Pandects to Justinian, two rather mediocre frescoes, the first for the most part executed by R.'s assistants, the second painted by Guillaume de Marcillat (Donati).

Each Idea is still depicted twice over on the vault in increasing degree of abstraction: first in an episode of transparent allegory (in the small corner panels) and then in its symbolic personification (in the roundels), almost as if to recall the Platonic itinerary of the spirit from the phenomenal world to the empyrean of pure ideas. Corresponding to the Disputation are the panel with Original Sin and the medallion of Theology (inspired by Dante's Beatrice); to the School of Athens correspond the Prime Mover (a gigantic female figure who moves the sphere of the Ptolemaic Universe) and Philosophy; to the Virtues the little scene of the Judgment of Solomon and Justice, still almost Peruginesque; finally, to the Parnassus correspond the story of Apollo and Marsyas (perhaps by the hand of Peruzzi) and Poetry. Prodigious appears the progress made by R. in the painting of this Room: if in the Disputation traces of Umbrian Quattrocento style are still noticeable, in the other frescoes his style has already won that perfect maturity, that equilibrium between truth and poetry, that "classicism," in short, which make it the mirror of the aesthetic ideal of the Renaissance. For the concept illustrated here — the reconciliation of ancient philosophy and theology, of the ancient world and the Christian one — this cycle marvelously translates one of the essential aspects of humanism and makes the Segnatura a sanctuary of Western culture.

In the Room of Heliodorus (1512-14) Sanzio developed a less complex program, representing four miracles of Providence for the protection of the Church threatened in its riches destined for worship and charity (Heliodorus), in the treasure of the Faith (Mass of Bolsena), in the person of the Vicar of Christ (Liberation of St. Peter) and in the seat of the pontificate, Rome (Attila), all allusive to the life and politics of Julius II, who cannot have been extraneous to the choice of themes. Here R., by now master of Tuscan drawing, attempts the conquest of the chromatic magic of the Venetians, stimulated by the example of Sebastiano del Piombo, who had been in Rome since 1511.

The fresco of the Expulsion of Heliodorus, who had come to steal the treasure of the Temple and was driven from the sanctuary by three scourging angels, is a composition entirely made of whirlwinds, where the real protagonist, the spirit of God, is invisible: it seems to descend from the gilded domes upon the altar, whence it then bursts forth, clearing the way before it and hurling the angels of vengeance upon the fallen profaner. R. here confronts for the first time the pictorial problem of violent motion, rendered even more vivid by the richness of the colors. The painting alludes to the policy of restoring the temporal rights of the Church tenaciously pursued by Pope Della Rovere ("Out with the barbarians"), who appears in the left corner carried on the gestatorial chair, in a superb triumphal portrait.

In the Mass of Bolsena R. resolves in a brilliant manner a very difficult spatial problem, illustrating a miracle that occurred in 1263, when the consecrated Host distilled drops of blood during the Mass of a priest tormented by doubts. To paint his story he had at his disposal the space of a lunette, reduced and made asymmetrical by the opening of a large cross-shaped window shifted to the left. R. overcomes the difficulty by inclining all the figures on that side toward the right and extending the architrave of the window to make of it a step of the altar, placed at the center of the lunette, while on the other side all the figures form stable masses. In doing so, he not only corrects the defect of the space but turns it into a merit, in that the restless figures of the faithful, behind the celebrant, suggest doubt, while the Pope (a portrait of Julius II) and his court, on the other side of the altar, signify in their immobility the certainty of the Faith. Preserved in a marvelous and extraordinarily "Venetian" manner in color is the famous group of the Swiss Guards (below, on the right), which gives an idea of how the frescoes of the Stanze must have appeared to contemporaries. In this detachment R. imitates, as never before in his work, the style of the Venetians in order to make his own the secret of their chromatic magic, just as in the Heraclitus he had imitated Michelangelo in order to conquer the plastic power of his drawing. Julius II was most devoted to the distinguished relic of the Corporal of the miracle (preserved in the cathedral of Orvieto), which partly explains the choice of the theme, unusual in sacred iconography.

The Liberation of St. Peter from prison, represented exactly according to the text of the Acts of the Apostles, anticipates Rembrandt and marks the entry of light as the principal protagonist of a painting in European art, causing (as Vasari had already noted) the backlight glow of the window below to contribute as well to the dazzling effect of the scene. The luministic effect of the central episode is rendered more intense by the vivid contrast of the black bars of the grating behind which it takes place, with the radiance of the angel. Clear in the choice of subject is the allusion to the title of St. Peter in Chains, borne by Julius II when he was a cardinal.

The Meeting of Attila with St. Leo the Great, a composition well balanced in the movement of its masses but cold when compared with the others, marks the beginning of the overwhelming collaboration of the disciples in the master's work, and in it one particularly feels the heavy hand of Giulio Romano. During the execution of this fresco Pope Della Rovere died, so that the head of his successor, Leo X de' Medici, was substituted for his own; thus causing him to appear twice in the same painting, where he had already been portrayed as a cardinal in the Pontiff's retinue. The allusion to the battle of Ravenna could also apply to the Medici Pope, who had been present at it in 1512. The vault shows, in four sections of feigned roundels, the frescoed episodes of the Burning Bush, the Sacrifice of Isaac, Jacob's Ladder and the Appearance of the Lord to Noah before the Ark, frescoes designed by R. but executed by Guglielmo di Marcillat, and all in symbolic relation to the corresponding compositions on the walls.

In the Stanza dell'Incendio (c. 1514-17), the last to be decorated, there is very little of his own, beyond the drawings and perhaps, at least in part, some cartoons. The fresco execution is due to the pupils, especially Penni and Giulio Romano. The program proposed to Sanzio intends to exalt the Church by recalling memorable deeds of two great Roman pontiffs, Leo III and IV, in homage to the reigning Leo X: the Fire in the Borgo, which gives the Stanza its name and perhaps alludes to the policy of peace desired by the Medici Pope; the Battle of Ostia, fought in 849, which here commemorates the fortification of the Lazio shores undertaken by Leo X; the Coronation of Charlemagne, where the Emperor has the features of Francis I and the Pontiff (as in the other frescoes) those of Leo X, in memory of the Concordat signed at Bologna between France and the Church in 1515; and finally the Justification of Leo III, allusive to the confirmation of the bull Unam sanctam decided in 1516 by the Lateran Council. In the first two frescoes one may reasonably suppose some intervention by R. in the execution of the cartoons, but not so in the painting; while for the other two it does not appear that his participation went beyond the drawings supplied to the pupils, directed by Penni and Giulio Romano. And yet that almost indirect presence of his places these compositions at an artistic level which, if undoubtedly inferior to that of the first two autograph Stanze, is nevertheless higher than that of the Sala di Costantino, executed almost entirely by the disciples after his death.

In these years there is information about R.'s activity as an architect, an art in which he had, at the beginning, to follow the guidance of Bramante. The latter, at the point of death (March 1514), recommended him to the Pope as his worthy successor in the Fabric of St. Peter's (brief of appointment of 1 August 1514, confirming the provisional charge of 1 April of that year) and in the functions of architect of the Apostolic Palaces. For the new Vatican Basilica Sanzio provided a wooden model (now lost), and in the Apostolic Palace he completed, continuing the work of his predecessor, the second floor of the Logge of St. Damasus (1514-18), adorned under his direction with stuccoes, frescoed panels and grotesques by Giulio Romano, Francesco Penni, Giovanni da Udine, Pierin del Vaga and others. He further enriched Bramante's two-storey construction with a final gallery with a peristyle, of the Corinthian order, corresponding to a third floor, which he added to the Vatican Palace, and where the Stufetta of Cardinal Bibbiena is found (1516), built to his design and by him adorned with mythological frescoes, inspired by the Roman paintings of the Domus Aurea, which had recently come to light again. Sanzio added a ramp to Bramante's Papal Stairs so as to give access to this new floor, which in the stair building looks out onto the Cortile del Maresciallo with a most elegant Loggetta (c. 1516). This, which has come to light again not many years ago, is entirely adorned with frescoes similar to those of the Loggia of St. Damasus, executed, under his guidance, by those same artists. It is further known that R. took part in the competition for the new façade of St. Lawrence in Florence (won by Michelangelo); that he provided designs for the Palazzo Pandolfini (there, 1516), for the Villa Madama in Rome (same date); for the Palazzo dell'Aquila in Borgo (destroyed) and for other works, not all attributed to him with equal certainty. For his glory as an architect the Chigi Chapel in St. Mary of the People (Rome) would suffice, begun to be built as early as 1512 and adorned on the vault with mosaics executed to his designs by the Venetian Luigi de Pace (signed and dated 1516). Here is still found the only sculpture modelled by R.: a Jonah, carved in marble by Lorenzetto.

Among the very many works of this period of full maturity and most rich production, only a few of the principal ones will be mentioned here: the Madonna of Foligno (Vatican, Pinacoteca, 1511-12), a painting of satisfied, serene beauty; the frescoes of Isaiah (Rome, St. Augustine, c. 1512, inspired by the prophets of the Sistine Chapel) and of the Sibyls (Rome, St. Mary of the Peace, c. 1514), marvellously posed in movements that sweeten without weakening the harmony of masses and of contrasting motions learned from Buonarroti; the joyous Galatea (Rome, Farnesina, 1514), a dream of a humanist poet in which the ancient myth is reborn to new life; the St. Cecilia (Bologna, Pinacoteca, c. 1514-15), a poem of blessed renunciation, which, according to Vasari's account, caused the old Francia to die of "grief and melancholy" when he saw it. Also from those years are some of his best portraits, such as that of Tommaso Inghirami (Boston, Gardner collection, c. 1514, another example in Florence, Pitti, considered by Fischel to be the original), in which art succeeds in transfiguring ugliness without altering it, or that of the mysterious Veiled Woman (Florence, Pitti, c. 1516) and of Baldassar Castiglione (Paris, Louvre, c. 1515). From that time also date two of his most celebrated Madonnas: the very popular one known as the Madonna della Seggiola (Florence, Pitti, c. 1515) and the transfigured Sistine Madonna (formerly in Dresden, Picture Gallery, same date), the most sublime among the countless images and visions in which R. glorified the Mother of God and her divine Son.

Toward those years, so great was the burden of work that the collaboration of his disciples in his works grew beyond measure, as may be noted, for example, in the mediocre St. Michael (Paris, Louvre, 1518), although in others the excellence of his hand still shines through, and among these there should be mentioned first of all the Cartoons for the Tapestries of the so-called Old School (London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1515-16), intended to adorn the walls of the Sistine Chapel and woven in Brussels, in the manufactory of Pieter van Aelst. The cycle comprises ten Tapestries (Vatican, Picture Gallery, 1517-19), with scenes drawn from the Acts of the Apostles and representing: the Blinding of Elymas, the Conversion of Saul, St. Stephen Stoned, St. Peter Healing the Lame Man, the Death of Ananias, the Delivery of the Keys, the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, St. Paul Preaching at Athens, the Sacrifice at Lystra, and finally St. Paul in Prison. No small part of the praise that these tapestries received from their first exhibition in the Sistine Chapel (26 Dec. 1519) must be given to the Flemish weaver, who freely translated into the formal language proper to his art the cartoons of Sanzio, which could equally well have lent themselves to being executed on panel or in fresco.

So compromised was R.'s fame by the ever-increasing collaboration of his workshop that a contemporary, Lionardo Sellajo, in a letter to Michelangelo, did not hesitate to condemn the frescoes with the Stories of Psyche (Rome, Farnesina, completed in 1518) as «a shameful thing for a great master». He was therefore able it seemed obvious to Cardinal Giuliano de' Medici to enter him
in competition for the painting of two altarpieces destined for
his cathedral of Narbonne, with Sebastiano del Piombo,
a good Venetian colourist whom Buonarroti supplied with
drawings. To Sanzio was commissioned a Transfiguration (Vatican, Pinacoteca, 1517-20), while his rival was to
paint the Raising of Lazarus (London, National
Gallery). Stung in his pride, the Urbinate wished to execute
this panel entirely with his own hand and surpassed himself, truly transfiguring his art, which here achieves
the miracle vainly dreamed of by the artists and theorists of
the Cinquecento: to fuse Tuscan « disegno » with Venetian
« colour » in a synthesis of absolute aesthetic completeness.
But, in setting foot on that Promised Land, in marking that beginning of a third style of his, prodigiously
new, R. was struck down by death, at the age of 37, on Good
Friday of 1520, when he had just finished the face
of the Redeemer in glory, « as the last thing he had
to do » (Vasari). The great panel, finished only in its
upper part (Christ, Moses, Elijah, the deacon, the group
of the three Apostles and the stupendous twilight landscape)
was placed, thus incomplete, at the head of R.'s funeral
bed and then finished, according to his design, by his
disciples (in particular by Giulio Romano and Penni).

The Renaissance aspired, and not in vain, to mirror
in its art the universality of the human spirit. And in the
great triad that dominates it, it seems that Leonardo predominantly represents the yearning to know, the noetic
faculty; Michelangelo the moral torment, the passionate
struggle of man with his destiny, the ethical element (and
both these factors ultimately prevailed over their art);
while of R. one might, perhaps, say that he represented the
fundamental aspiration of those two centuries: the thirst for
beauty, the aesthetic sense. Of the three, Sanzio is, in fact,
the most « pure » artist, taken by nothing else, when he paints,
than by the musical, limpid eurhythmy of his forms. -
See plates XVI-XVIII.

Deoclecio Redig de Campos