Ottimo Universale: Raphael
Raphael: The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (‘The Alba Madonna’), about 1509–11. Oil on wood transferred to canvas, 94.5cm diameter. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Andrew W. Mellon Collection (1937.1.24) Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
Five hundred years is a long time for anything to survive, let alone a painting on a wooden panel prone to cracking, warping, or going up in flames — plus a skim of rabbit glue and chalk, or similar, topped with pigment and oil — yet, because of Raffaello Santi da Urbino’s undeniable brilliance of technique as well as representation, the National Gallery has been able to pull off the greatest Raphael (1483-1520) show ever. This pays tribute to director Gabriele Finaldi, who has set the NG alight with one cracker after another. For the first time, Raphael’s whole orbit of ability is represented in a dazzling UK show.
Dubbed by Giorgio Vasari “ottimo universale”, or universal artist, Raphael’s oevre, as illustrated here, encompasses paintings that range in scale from very small, such as An Allegory or Vision of a Knight (proving one sort of technical skill) to monumental altarpieces of trademark clarity and brilliance (showing other skills, not only compositional, alongside painting at life-size or greater, which requires different techniques as well as stamina), to designs for enormous tapestries; to grand architecture that still stands; to drawings for urns and for exhibited roundels (these last never before seen outside Italy).
Raphael: An Allegory ('Vision of a Knight'), about 1504. Oil on poplar, 17.1 x 17.3 cm. © The National Gallery, London
Whether done in black chalk, red chalk, or brown ink, the drawings indicate a genius almost playing with his abilities. Everything is perfect: musculature, pose, volume.
Raphael: An Angel. Pen and brown ink over geometrical indications in blind stylus, 17.9 × 20.6 cm. The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
A final room holds some portraits, including one of a bare-breasted woman believed to be one of several lovers, perhaps the most beloved. Whether or not she was also a working artist’s model, La Fornarina (1518-1519) was evidently important, for her soft upper arm is clasped by an armlet bearing the painter’s name. Branded: what further evidence of “possession” does one need. Yet, her glance is so bold and amused, her full breasts and sensual, relaxed belly so calmly on offer, that one might ask, who owns whom. This lovely and unique picture is one of the last the artist completed and was probably in his studio when he died.
Raphael: Portrait of a Woman ('La Fornarina') about 1519-20. Oil on wood. 87 × 63 cm. Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Rome. Photo © Stockley
What a show! What a show off! What a showman. He could do it all; but how he found the time, given the scale of output (in terms of volume and size) against death at just 37, is anyone’s guess. Was he driven by competition; of surpassing his hero Leonardo da Vinci? Or of proving he was better than his living rival Michelangelo, depicted ostensibly as Heraclitus but in fact as a sullen scribbler in the full-size reproduction of Raphael’s fresco, the School of Athens ( 1509-10) done for Pope Julius II’s private apartments, or Stanze. Note that at the time, far from being dejected/abject, Michelangelo was actually toiling at his own masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel, nearby. How could there not be artistic rivalry? Raphael’s seated Julius II, looking tired and frail, is also here. But while the face is may be worn, look at the magisterial hand and the rings [detail below]. Wonderful.
Detail of Raphael: Portrait of Pope Julius II, 1511. Oil on poplar. 108.7 × 81 cm. The National Gallery, London. Bought, 1824. Photo © Stockley
*The National Gallery includes nine of its own Raphael paintings, making a backbone to more than 90 works in total. I doubt we will see such a collection again in our lifetime in one place. They come from The Louvre, The Prado, The Uffizi; from Bologna, from Washington, from the Vatican. Everyone pulled together despite a two-year delay due to Covid.
Raphael’s career might easily have been blighted. Raised in Urbino, his mother died when he was eight and his father, a painter, when he was eleven. Somehow young Raphael continued, rapidly honing skills he was evidently born with, so that he was already in demand while still a teenager. At some disputed point he worked either with or for Perugino. Those precocious skills, combined with great energy and ambition, were further enhanced by continual drawing from life.
And it shows. For example take the very big tondo in its gorgeous frame, The Alba Madonna (1509-11). Here is the lovely young mother, Mary, in her crimson-pink gown, her voluminous blue cape folding softly all about her. The Christ Child, already showing authority, stands above John the Baptist, in what must be the most tender portrait ever. This little red-haired boy with his cloud of hair, dressed in a soft animal skin, crouches slightly outside the magic circle, the central area of mother and child; already a little in the wilderness and just slightly cropped by the frame.
Raphael: The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (‘The Alba Madonna’), about 1509–11. Oil on wood transferred to canvas, 94.5cm diameter. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Andrew W. Mellon Collection. Photo © Stockley
The Alba Madonna is a perfect example of what set Raphael apart. The hands, the bodies, the faces: over and again, flesh has weight and true heaviness; hands could, it seems, reach out towards you; poses are completely right. There is no stiffness whatsoever; everything flows in three-dimensional curves and almost everyone trapped in these frames for 500 years could at any moment step out of them.
Faultless drawing is at the heart of it, and Raphael’s drawing could surpass that of both da Vinci and Michelangelo. Look at this Madonna close up (itself a privilege), and you can see that in large part the paint surface is smooth and flat, with raised ‘edges’ emphasising where features such as necklines or junctures of clothing, or the outside line of an arm, have been drawn with the brush, repeatedly and with great care, delineating the figure and defining garments. Drawing from the life has got it all exactly right; much of the rest is magnificent, magisterial colouring in. A full-size drawing of Diogenes (a sketch for the School of Athens) gives an insight into how Raphael worked. Perhaps he didn’t entrust scaling up to assistants, but drew the figure at the final size himself. Perhaps assistants copied from that — but it’s a different ball game, leading to much greater accuracy. No wonder life spills from these paintings.
Today, we often talk of bucket lists. What could the young Raphael have added to his? But seeing this show should go to the top of ours.
The Credit Suisse Exhibition: RAPHAEL
National Gallery, London
April 9 – 31 July 2022
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/
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