An Introduction to Raphael's painting, explaining his influences, the development of his style under Perugino, the birth of his Florentine manner from 1504 onward, & his third & final manner which he matures in Rome from 1509 to 1513 & maintains until his 1520 death, at 37.

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Away from Raphael

This thread will contain little to no original research, as it is kept for my book on Renaissance painting and immanence. The introduction will be simple and matter of fact, its point being to develop the necessary sensibility to "understand" and "feel" Raphael's art.

In order to understand Raphael's early style (1500-1504), we must first turn to Perugino, his master.

Perugino's mature manner (1470-1500) is the accomplishment of the Renaissance dream of representing space itself, a dream started with Masaccio (1401-1428) in 1427.

Masaccio's 1427 Trinity was the first work of art to directly turn space into its main interest. Probably under the guidance of Brunelleschi, Masaccio had placed his vanishing point at the bottom of the frame, producing an impossible space, which dramatized the subject.

It was from the developments of Masaccio that would spring the works of Fra Angelico, and more importantly to this story, of Piero della Francesca (1415-1492).
Della Francesca was properly obsessed with space and its scientific construction.

In the Annunciation of his Polyptych of St Anthony (1470), Piero della Francesca had painted a direct representation of Grace through a breach of perspective. This kind of space would form the basis to Perugino's practice, along with another influence.

Verrocchio's style was a deepening of the space he had inherited from painters such as Masaccio and Piero della Francesca, which he had organized into a new coherence between represented subject and background, as an entire world.

It is according to these different influences (Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Verrocchio), that we must understand Perugino's mature style as a widening and deepening of a scientific space which allows him to blend together background and subject as a unity.

Raphael's early style, save for a certain poetic sensibility which Perugino's later works seem to lack, is hard to distinguish from his master's style. He however lowered his horizon, which allowed him to stretch his space further yet, and obtain a vast and spacious picture.

However Raphael's will always be an art of grace; and his early works just as his later ones will always exhibit that one quality. His faces are angelic and pure, his atmosphere noble and refined, almost airy, with a poetic and mysterious aspect.

In short, Raphael's early style, which he develops by learning from his master Perugino, is a refinement upon the latter's mature manner, with the same conception of space, which he imbued, however, with a newfound sense of grace.

By 1505, Raphael had probably been in Florence, where he would have come in contact with Leonardo's mature style, with its extremely refined sfumato, which blends forms together and grants the representation of the human figure a newfound realism.

The Madonna del Prato is from this period, a calm, dreamy & perfect painting. This is nowhere near Raphael's maturity, but we already are in presence of the works of an absolute master; the shadows, colors, corporality & unity of the figures & background can bear witness to it.

This perfection is perhaps the single greatest obstacle to enjoying Raphael. In our current culture, it speaks against him. The average person will prefer Caravaggio to Raphael, thinking the former "deeper" or "more emotional" — they couldn't be more wrong.

The easy sentimentality & vulgarity of a painter like Caravaggio appeals to a fundamentally vulgar epoch, to a fundamentally bourgeois one. Raphael's art, however, just like Titian's first style, hides in broad daylight its profundity; its smooth appearance conceals its depths.

Raphael, by 1505, had given up the cold and rigorous perfection of Perugino's mature style for a graceful approach that retained his depth of space and added the composition methods of Leonardo, as well as his sfumato.

With Raphael's second style, we see the artist assuming certain qualities that will remain constant for the rest of his life; Perugino had given him rigor and depth, but Florence allowed him to add grace and corporeality.

Raphael would replace Leonardo's soft-spoken sfumato with his own technique: instead of blending shadows together as Leonardo had done, he would blend in tonal intensities. Unione allowed for more vibrant, deep, and powerful color, while keeping the subtlety of sfumato.

This unione meant that he would be able to blend colors together, without sacrificing the purity of his pigments, as Leonardo had to do. The soft transitions thus achieved, taken with the unifying glow of the varnish, allowed for a complete unity of color and movement.

Already at this point, around 1506-1507, we are dealing with an artist who, although not at his prime, has attained such a mastery over his means that he is able to freely innovate and experiment.

To understand what Raphael had achieved through his second style, one can compare his 1504 Granduca Madonna, still indebted to Perugino's rigid style, with his small Cowper Madonna, from 1505, where we witness a bursting of color, and a grand opening of his color-space.

Already by 1505, the upper register of the San Severo capella in Perugia, painted in fresco by Raphael, can be contrasted with Perugino's work on the bottom section in the 1520s.

Although exceedingly damaged, we can see how Raphael's fresco already bears a new corporeality, how his unione, cangiante and chiaroscuro, taken together, have allowed him to paint with new crispness and grace.

Raphael is in Rome by 1508, and it is through a synthesis of this prior mastery of fresco, a potential influence from Michelangelo, and a contact with Antiquity, that his Roman period truly begins.

But whereas Michelangelo is exclusively concerned with the expression of metaphysical truths through the human form, Raphael's painting is a grand design which includes a rational[ized] space in which his figures take place.

His School of Athens (1509-1511) is not only a depiction of philosophy as a historical community; it is, like his 1511 Parnassus, a humanity that isn't redeemed by anything outside itself, and that doesn't need to be redeemed. Never since the Greeks had mankind been so human.

There is no God here, no Being, no thing-in-itself, no metaphysics, no transcendence, no sin, nothing fallen seeking redemption — only the clear morning light of mankind.

It is with his Madonna di Foligno that Raphael reaches his complete artistic maturity. The inclusion of different planes and color fields responding to each other allows him to unify the picture plane in a single network of depths, shapes and colors.

His Triumph of Galatea I will not discuss as I spend an entire chapter on it in my book on immanence and Renaissance painting; I'll rather move to his Sistine Madonna. It's often been considered the most profound painting ever produced.

The Sistine Madonna recounts the replacement of the Old Testament with the sacrifice of God; absolute terror grips Mary and the Christ child as they realize what will happen. The abolished cherubim of the Old God gaze longingly in the distance, and melancholy engulfs the whole.

Raphael has however included within this painting a certain number of elements pointing to a further, deeper meaning: the setting, drapes, pointed finger and something in the clouds, all together, seem to indicate something else.

His portrait of his friend Baldassare Castiglione attains absolute perfection — color, composition and psychological observation come together to describe an individuality, and its world; it is a monad.

The brown & faded colors to dramatize the eyes, which in turn express an infinite melancholy. His lips, however, stretch into something like a smile, a wry and playful smile. The work's a tension between great sadness and profound joy of a man who's seen the world

alright fuck this thread