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His work in the perception of scholars and the public
Raphael Rediscovered
Jürg Meyer zur
Capellen
Raphael's paintings are among the
highlights of European and American collections and continue to draw
large numbers of visitors. The extensive restoration projects and numerous
publications realised in connection
with the Raphael Year 1983 resulted
in a wealth of new insights, which by
now are almost impossible to keep track
of in their entirety. As part of the Raffael Projekt, which has its home at
the Institut für Kunstgeschichte,
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität
Münster, a catalogue of works is currently being established that will give
access to the results of research carried out during the past decades.
When the Bibliographische Institut and
the publisher Brockhaus in 1996 made
plans for a multi-volume project on the
thousand greatest figures in history and
culture, their list obviously included such
famous artists as Leonardo, Rembrandt,
Goya and Cééézanne. Raphael was not
among them: For such an enterprise,
he probably was not deemed sufficiently 'interesting', according to current criteria, or perhaps not 'exciting' enough.
Unease about Raphael's art is not a
modern phenomenon, for the pioneers
of classical modernity already enjoyed
disparaging his work, which for centuries had been regarded as exemplary
and was taught at the academies of art.
His contemporaries not unreasonably
saw Raphael as the protagonist of harmo-
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nious composition, but it was academic scholarship that eventually led to
this canonisation and thus made him
a target for the modernisers taking the
stage in the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, Raphael remains a favourite among a wider audience. Visiting
any of the great museums that hold important works by his hand, time and again
one notices considerable groups of visitors gathering in front of his paintings and reacting with all shades from
Ill. 1: Raphael "Madonna of the Meadow"
("Madonna del Prato"). Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. 628. Poplar, 113 x 88 cm.
Dated apparently 1506
interest to veneration. The same holds true
for exhibitions of his paintings and drawings
put on during the last decades, which proved
to be very popular. Mindful of this and not
forgetting the undoubted significance of
the artist, who together with Leonardo and
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Ill. 2: Raphael "Compositional Studies".
Vienna, Albertina, no. 207 recto. Drawing,
24.6 x 36.3 cm
Michelangelo make up the 'triad' of the
High Renaissance in Italian painting,
one might assume that scholars would
reassess his œuvre on a timely and
more sophisticated level. What happened was just the opposite.
Leading the way for modern Raphael studies was at work that still remains instructive, namely Johann David
Passavant's "Rafael von Urbino und
sein Vater Giovanni Santi“, published in
three volumes between 1839 and 1858
and with a catalogue of works which is
indispensable for scholars to this day.
While many smaller contributions were
published during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, it was only Luitpold Dussler's rather slim critical catalogue of Raphael's pictures, wall paintings and tapestries, appearing in German in 1966 and in English in 1971,
that took into account of up-to-date
research and offered useful references to
the relevant literature about the artist's
works. When the artist's quincentenary
birthday came araound in 1983, the inevitable happened. There was hardly
a museum holding examples of his work
that lost the opportunity for a special
exhibition, numerous scholars contributed in his honour at least one publication, if not more, and on top of
this, symposia brought forth a flood
of expert opinions.
After the deluge, little was heard
again about Raphael for a considerable time. Only more recently
have younger scholars in particular
taken up the challenge, although they
seem to prefer theoretical discourse
to looking at the paintings themselves.
In connection with the 1983 jubilee,
many pictures had undergone remarkable changes, because several of the
great museums had their Raphael
holdings re-examined with scientific
methods and restored according to
state-of-the-art techniques. The results can also be appreciated in specialist publications, where many of Raphael's paintings now appear in brilliant colours. It is not the new luminosity of the paintings, however, that has
impressed scholars and the interested
public alike, but also the technical
insights the restorations provide and
which reveal entirely new contexts.
Here X-ray photographs play an im-
Ill. 3 (left.): Raphael "The Three Graces". Chantilly, Musée Condé, inv. 38.
Wood, 17 x 17 cm
Ill. 4 (below): Raphael "The Three Graces". Chantilly, Musé e Condé, , inv. 38.
Infrared photograph
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portant role, but even more crucial are
infrared reflectograms, since they allow
us to 'get under the skin' of the pictures.
They reveal methods of transfer, for example, and slight or serious revisions of
the concept, which the artist made before finishing a painting. Innovative
technology now makes it also possible
to identify later changes by different
hands to a fair degree. All this means
that during the last thirty years so many
new and fundamental insights have been
gained and so much literature about the
artist produced that Dussler's creditable publication looks now definitely
dated.
Objectives
This was the situation in the early 1990s,
when the Institut füü rKunstgeschichte
together with the Kunsthistorische Inof the Julius-Maximilians-Universitä t
Wüürzburg was able to initiate a project to make Raphael's pictorial œuvre
accessible on the basis of the current state
of scholarly debate and scientific research. The target audience was not so
much Raphael specialists but rather our
colleagues at the universities and museums and in particular the students,
who will be provided with a convenient research gateway to the paintings.
Following the publication of "Raphael
in Florence" (1996), work began on the
catalogue proper, which is written in Enlish so as to reach a larger audience. The
catalogue is to appear in three instalments, the first of which was published
in 2001 ("Raphael - The Paintings:
The Beginnings in Umbria and Florence ca. 1500-1508"). The second volume, on the roman altarpieces and panel
paintings, is in preparation, while the
final volume will be devoted to the
frescoes and tapestry designs.
In the first volume, which covers Raphael's early works from his Umbrian
and the subsequent Florentine periods
up to 1508, it is the genres of altarpie-
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ces, devotional pictures and portraits
that provide crucial insights into the
evolution of the young Raphael and
his artistic dialogue with his great contemporaries and the traditions of fifteenth-century art. Here the main
points to establish are a chronology
of the works which is basically consistent and also to relieve the œuvre
from mistaken attributions. While opinions about the chronology still widely
diverge among the specialists, attributions have been carefully reconsidered
over the last few decades, and so relatively few dubious paintings remained
to be rejected. In order to avoid the
problem of confounding contentious
attributions with even more controversial ones, the approach was adop-
Ill. 5: Raphael "Madonna di Loreto".
Chantilly, Musée Condé, inv. 68. Poplar,
120 x 90 cm
ted to reject any paintings that do not
conform with Raphael's own painting
style nor fit the chronology.
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Raphael's studies in Florence
Already the important early source for
Raphael's life, the "Lives" (1550 and
1568) of the art critic Giorgio Vasari
calls the Florentine years Raphael's apprenticeship. The relatively large number of drawings surviving from this period record how the painter systematically acquired a grammar of forms which
at first was used to resolve immediate
challenges and then provided the basis
for his later and more ambitious compositions. A good example to illusrate his work methods is the "Madonna del Prato" (ca. 1505-6) in the
Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna
(ill. 1). Many preparatory drawings for
this painting have survived, of which
those on a double spread are particularly illuminating. Whereas the verso
shows several single studies for the
Child and St. John, the recto (ill. 2)
is concended with variations of the
Mother and Child, in one sketch acIll. 6: Raphael "Lo Spasimo". Madrid,
Prado, inv. 298. Wood transferred to canvas,
318 x 229 cm.
Signed RAPHAEL VR/BINAS
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companied by St. John. Raphael is
feeling his way around the theme,
so to speak, until he has found a satifactory solution. On the basis of such
sketches - posibbly with intermediary
stages - a full-scale cartoon, exactly defining the composition, would be
prepared, and after copying it on the
ground of the primed painting space
would in turn serve as the basis for
the painterly execution. In most cases
the cartoons have disappeared, but
technical tools like infrared photographs or infrared reflectograms will
show traces of the transfer on the
ground. At the same time we can observe that the artist - like his contemporaries in general - did not adhere to
a rigid scheme as regards the conception and execution as well as the
methods of transfer.
While for many paintings infrared
photographs document highly precise
underdrawings on the prepared ground,
which define the composition in detail, the "Three Graces" in the Musée
Condéé at Chantilly, for example, shows
a very freely drawn design which was
heavily revised for the finished work
(ca. 1504, ills. 3 and 4). The most pro-
minent revision concerns the beauty
on the right, who originally did not
hold a globe, but was meant to cover
her pudenda with her left in the 'pudicitia' gesture. The central figure as
well was at first not holding a globe
and instead had placed her hand on
the shoulder of the maiden to her right.
Changes of this kind sometimes have
considerable implications for a scholar's final evaluation. Thus we may assume that the artist prepared only a
cursory preparatory sketch, defined
the composition with light brush or
chalk on the ground and during the
rather free execution decided on important revisions. These latter are also of
significance for the reading. When we
call the painting "The Three Graces",
we do so partly because of its formal
relation to an antique marble group,
even though the globes added during the
late stages of the execution may also be
understood as golden apples, which
would identify the figures as the Hes-
Ill. 7: "Lo Spasimo". Etching by Agostino
Veneziano (ca. 1490-1540) 1517
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perides. It remains an open question
whether this revision was the result
of the master's own cogitations or
whether it related to a possible commission. At the time, Raphael was
usually working by himself, and although our sources sometimes mention collaborators, we can only vaguely
conjecture how they were employed.
This also means that discussions about
the artist's early career always focus
on problems of authorship and so
questions concerning this period are
simple.
Raphael in Rome
The range of problems becomes much
wider during his Roman period. This in
a way reflects the rise of the artist,
who previously had worked mainly on
his own, to become the head of a
large workshop and a member of the
papal household under Julius II and
Leo X. At the same time, panel paintings increasingly played a lesser part
among Raphael's artistic activities,
and he was also working on large pictorial and decorative cycles for the popes
and other eminent patrons, not to
mention his architectural projects. It
is nevertheless the panel paintings
that time and again not only show his
own hand, but also very poignantly record his artistic reorientations. The
questions arising from the new situation
in Rome cannot be restricted to analysing the different shares of master and
collaborators, but also need to carefully define the characteristics of
Raphael's pictorial inventions against
those of his assistants and followers.
As the latter aspect has been much
neglected especially among younger
Raphael scholars, it seems apposite to
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to take a leaf from a tradition of German art historical writing which emphasises the analysis of artistic conceptions. In addition, one needs to explain the increasingly complex iconographic programs and critically weigh
the different theories which have been
put forward. A case in point are the
"Sistine Madonna" at Dresden and the
"Transfiguration" in the Vatican Pinacoteca, two paintings which have been
object of countless scholarly publications without their contents having
become much clearer. - Examples follow to illustrate some of the relevant
questions relating to the Roman period.
Ill. 8: Raphael "Madonna with the Child,
St Elizabeth and the Young St John" ("La Perla").
Madrid, Prado, inv. 301. Poplar,
144 x 115 cm
Whereas the frescoe cycles were
produced on behalf of the popes or
the banker Agostino Chigi, the large
altarpieces and the panel paintings
were mostly made for different types
of clients; only in a few exeptional
cases can we assume, rather than prove,
the involvement of a patron of the
highest rank, the "Sistine Madonna"
being one example. A similar situation
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applies to the "Madonna di Loreto"
(ca. 1511-12, ill. 5) where Julius II's
assumed involvement is all the more
plausible as the painting together
with the pope's portrait were put on
public view already in the early sixteenth century at S. Maria del Popolo,
a church with which Julius had close
connections. The original painting disappeared sometime later in the sixteenth
century, but the composition became
so popular that more than a hundred
copies still survive. Its popularity also
meant that the search for the original
began early; and for a long time a
copy at the Santa Casa in Loreto, after which the picture was named, was
believed to be just that. It was only on
the basis of recent archival research
that the version in the Muséée Condéé at
Chantilly was suggested to be autograph; this was confirmed after meticulous examination in conjunction
with its cleaning. It also showed that
the figure of St. Joseph presumably
was added by Raphael himself at a
later date. It remains unclear, however, who was responible for this
idea, and so we are again confronted
with the fact that the content of a
picture was considerably altered in
the making: In precise iconographic
terms, the type of "Madonna with the
Veil" metamorphosed into a "Holy
Family". The questions posed by this
painting from the early Roman period are just a foretaste of the problems to come, however, for during
this time Raphael was still executing
most of his works wholly by himself.
This situation was soon to change;
and we are faced with completely new
problems. A very interesting example
of this situation is the "Spasimo di
Sicilia" of about 1515-16 and now at
the Prado; the title may be rendered
as the "Agony of the Virgin" (ill. 6).
The painting exemplifies new artistic
strategies which Raphael was developing partly in response to the heavy
workload of his activities at the papal
palace. It is well known that for the
frescoes in the later Vatican Stanze and
Logge, Raphael devoted himself mainly to establishing the pictorial concepts, the execution of which he left
to his assistants. For the "Spasimo di
Silica", our sources suggest that it was
commissioned by the jurist Giacomo
Basilicò from Palermo, whose identity
is a blank.
Speculation has been going on for a
time about how somebody as seemingly nondescript and living far away in Sicily was able to acquire a large signed
altarpiece (3.18 x 2.29 cm) from Raphael, while grandees like Duke Alfonso
d'Este of Ferrara failed miserably to
obtain a painting by the artist's hand.
A closer look reveals, however, that
next to some brilliant painterly areas
undoubtedly by Raphael himself
there are large parts of considerably
poorer quality which were obviously
Ill. 9: Giulio Romano "Figure Study for the
Young Christ". Berlin, Staatliche Museen,
Kupferstichkabinett, Drawing 17,3 x 9,7 cm,
inv. 21551v
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Ill. 10: Raphael "Madonna with the Child,
St Elizabeth and the Young St John" ("La
Perla"). Madrid, Prado, inv. 301.
X-ray photograph
executed by members of the workshop. Against this, the unusual and inventive composition is very remarkable,
as Raphael was obviously contemplating a complex iconographic program
which included Northern pictorial conventions and in effect produced a composition which foreshadowed the
Baroque. The artist must have been
primarily concerned with conceptual
lines of approach. Here a suggestion
recently put forward by Konrad Oberhuber and Achim Gnann offers a new
perspective ("Raphael und der klassische Stil in Rom", 1999). They argue that
Raphael commissioned engravings to
be made from his designs in order to
make his pictorial inventions more widely known. In the case of the "Spasimo
di Sicilia", the argument is fully substantiated. Probably on the basis of amodello the artist had the engraver
Agostino Veneziano make an etching
as early as 1517 (ill. 7), and this was
what art critics relied on, pre-eminently
Giorgio Vasari, who praised the painting or rather the composition, to the
skies without having seen the actual
picture. It seems save to assume that
in this and other cases Raphael's prime
interest was to make his pictorial ideas
known through prints and not the autograph execution of a work which was
meant for a far-away city. In a way,
Basilicò s commission was likely treated
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as a means to an end.
A clearer picture about the collaboration between master and assistants during Raphael's later years
emerges from a study of the "Virgin
and Child with St Elizabeth and the
Young St John" of about 1518, also
known as "La Perla", at the Prado in
Madrid (ill. 8). In the seventeenth century the picture came into the possession of King Philip II of Spain, who
is said to have treasured it as the
pearl of his collection, whence it's
enduring alternative title. The fame of
the picture declined only in the later
nineteenth century, when Raphael's
authorship was first challenged and
finally the invention and execution
attributed to his assistant Giulio Romano. More recently, technical investigations have led to a revision of this
view, as the genesis can now be more
precisely defined and the practices of
the workshop elucidated. It was certainly on the basis of a Leonardesque
design for the central group of a complexity only Raphael would have been
capable of, that Giulio Romano executed individual studies such as that for
the Christ Child (ill. 9). The studies were
then combined for the cartoon and the
latter transferred to canvas. The X-ray
photograph (ill. 10) shows that it was
indeed the central group with Mary,
Elizabeth and the Child which was
corrected and painterly reworked at
the final stage. We may give this revision to Raphael himself, all the more
because the facture is pictorially
superior. The remaining areas, espe-
cially the background, he again left to
Giulio Romano, giving him great
freedom. In this way "La Perla" provides significant insights into the close
collaboration of Raphael and his assistants.
Confronted with such a painting,
our idea of an 'original' becomes questionable, in particular if we equate it
with a work solely executed by the
artist. It is therefore necessary in each
case to define as precisely as possible
the contribution of the master and that
of his assistants and thus determine
the merits of the original in question.
For Raphael's later years in Rome, a
further problem needs to be addressed, namely that of the repetitions
which appeared very soon after a painting was finished - like the numerous
copies of the "Madonna di Loreto" already mentioned (ill. 5). The most important distinction is between a copy,
which is a later repetition by another
hand, and a replica, which is a duplicate
produced by the workshop, occasionally with the artist directly participating. - In this context, something needs
to be said about the critical evaluation
of copies, a well-established part of
research in other branches of the Humanities such as archaeology.
A good example that a similar approach can be fruitfully applied also
to the arts is the "Portrait of a Young
Man" in the Muzeum Czartoryski in
Cracow, which is given unanimously
to Raphael and dated to his early Roman years. Apparently the picture was
stolen in about 1944 by the German gauleiter or his second-in-command and
then vanished without a trace; it may
have been destroyed during the war or
still exist in a private collection. Some
black-and-white photographs survive,
but only one old and very poor colour
Ill. 11: Copy after Raphael "Portrait of a
Young Man". Bergamo, Accademia
Carrara, oil on canvas, 77 x 62 cm
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photograph which gives no indication
of the picture's quality. The Accademia
Carrara in Bergamo holds a very good
copy dating from the early sixteenth
century (ill. 11). This picture, which is
certainly not by Raphael's workshop but
possibly by an artist from northern
Italy, gives a very vivid impression of
the pictorial merits of the vanished
original, especially the delicately nuanced colours of the dress, but also
the individual rendition of the different types of textiles. Because of its
high quality, the copy may help to
identify the original should it ever
turn up again.
Ill. 12: Raphael "Madonna of the Pinks".
London, National Gallery, inv. NG 6596.
Wood, 29 x 23 cm
fact a further area for future research,
investigating, for instance the manner
and amount of Raphael's assistants'
contributions to earlier versions. The
aim is surely not to discover new autograph works or what commonly called 'originals', but first and foremost
to obtain a fuller understanding of
the organisation and practice of the
workshop. Archaeology again provides a suitable reference, because
both it and art history are not in the
business of finding great treasures,
but primarily concern themselves
with the painstaking retrieval of historical and artistic processes.
Corrected and translated version of an
article published in:
Forschungsjournal. Universitäät Münster.
February 2005, vol. 13, pp. 15-22.
Commercial
and scholarly interests
A totally different dimension is revealed once questions are raised about
replicas or variations in which the artist might have taken an active part.
As in his later Roman period Raphael's
paintings or rather the compositions
were much acclaimed, it seems likely
that already during the lifetime versions of the originals were commissioned from his workshop. This assumption is partly based on the fact
that we know of a number of repetitions
of outstanding works, of which many
examples are held in private collections
to this day. Now the relationship of
scholars, especially those knowledgeable about paintings and prints, with
private collectors and art dealers has
a long and also positive tradition, because it is often only with such contacts that one can get to know works
in private collections and gather
valuable information. In recent years
the situation has changed, however, in
that scholarly activities have occasionally been compromised. The large
amounts of money sometimes spent
on Old Master paintings at auctions
has encouraged a commercial attitude
not only among the public, but also
among collectors.
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With regard to Raphael, a case in
point is the "Madonna of the Pinks"
of around 1506 (ill. 12), a version of
which was fairly recently discovered
in a private collection and attributed
to the artist. In competition with the
Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the
National Gallery in London acquired
the picture for some forty million euros.
It is understandable that some collectors, should they find themselves in
the possession of a Raphael, would
try for a repeat of such a success story.
As I found out, however, similar expectations may have problematic repercussions also for someone who is engaged
in compiling a catalogue of works,
since said collectors or art dealers (or
now rather their lawyers) sometimes
seem to believe that with the right
kind of expert opinion a painting can
be glorified to the point where it is
implicitly ranked as an original. It is
easy to see that under such circumstances it would be tempting to put
pressure on the researcher and thereby
endanger the integrity of the catalogue. Regardless of such dilemmas,
the study of copies and replicas is in
Jürg Meyer zur Capellen, born
1941 in Göttingen. Study of art
history, archaeology and Italian
philology at the universities of
Munich, Gö ttingen and Wü rzburg,
1972 doctoral dissertation on the
Venetian artist Andrea Previtali,
from 1974 Lecturer at the Institut
für Kunstgeschichte of Freiburg
University, 1982 qualified as Reader with a study on Gentile Bellini,
Assistant Lecturer in Freiburg,
Cologne and Mü nster and since
1988 Professor of Art History at
Mü nster University. Publications
on Italian painting, cultural exchanges between Europe and Islamic countries, twentieth-century
art, Titian, Paolo Veronese, Ottoman portraits and most recently on
Raphael. For several years he has
been in charge of the Raffael Projekt based at the universities of
Mü nster and Wü rzburg.
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