Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

succession of artists by imitating their excellences, without ever

losing his own independence and originality. He did not need

solitude in order to be himself.

His morals were not quite up to his manners. He could not have

painted women so attractively had he not been powerfully attracted

by their charms. He wrote love sonnets on the back of his drawings for

the Disputa. He had a concatenation of mistresses, but everybody,

including the Pope, seemed to think that so great an artist had a

right to such amusements. Vasari, after describing Raphael's sexual

promiscuity, apparently saw no contradiction in remarking, two pages

later, that "those who copy his virtuous life will be rewarded in

heaven." `051875 When Castiglione asked Raphael where he found the

models for the beautiful women whom he painted, he replied that he

created them in his imagination out of the diverse elements of

beauty present in different women; `051876 hence he needed a large

variety of samples. Nevertheless there is a healthy, life-enhancing

tone in his character and his works, a unity, peace, and serenity in

his career, amid the conflicts, divisions, envies, and

recriminations of the age. He ignored the politics that were consuming

Leo and Italy, perhaps feeling that the repetitious contentions of

parties and states for power and privilege are the monotonous froth of

history, and that nothing matters but devotion to goodness, beauty,

and truth.

Raphael left the pursuit of truth to more reckless spirits, and

contented himself with the service of beauty. In the first years of

Leo's reign he continued the decoration of the Stanza d'Eliodoro. By

some whim of circumstance- and to symbolize the expulsion of the

barbari from Italy- Julius had chosen, for the second main mural

of the room, the historic meeting of Attila and Leo I (452). Raphael's

drawing had already given the first Leo the features of the second

Julius when the tenth Leo came to the papal throne. The drawing was

revised, and Leo became Leo. More successful than this vast assemblage

is the smaller picture that Raphael painted in an arch over a window

of the same room. Here the new Pope, perhaps to commemorate his escape

from the French at Milan, suggested as topic the deliverance of

Peter from prison by an angel. Raphael used all his compositional

artistry to give unity and life to a story broken by the casement into

three scenes: on the left the sleeping guards, at the top an angel

waking Peter, at the right the angel leading the drowsy and bewildered

Apostle to freedom. The radiance of the angel illuminating the cell,

shining upon the soldiers' armor and blinding their eyes, and the

crescent moon whitening the clouds, make this a model pictorial

study of light.

The young artist was avid of every new technique. Bramante,

without Michelangelo's permission, had secretly taken his friend to

see the frescoes of the Sistine vault before they were finished.

Raphael was deeply impressed; perhaps, with the modesty that still

accompanied his pride, he felt himself in the presence of a genius

more powerful, if less gracious, than his own. He let the new

influence move him in the themes and forms of the ceiling frescoes

in the room of Helidorus: God Appearing to Noah, Abraham's Sacrifice,

Jacob's Dream, and The Burning Bush. It shows again in the

Prophet Isaiah that he painted for the church of St. Augustine.

In 1514 he began work on the room known from its main picture as the

Stanza dell' Incendio del Borgo. A medieval legend told how Pope Leo

III (795-816), merely by making the sign of the cross, had put out a

fire that threatened to consume the Borgo- i.e., the borough of Rome

around the Vatican. Probably Raphael made only the cartoon for this

mural, and assigned the painting of it to his pupil Gianfrancesco

Penni. Even so it is a powerful composition, in Raphael's best

episodic narrative style. Mingling classical and Christian story,

Raphael showed, on the left, a handsome and muscular Aeneas carrying

to safety his old but muscular father Anchises. Another nude male,

perfectly drawn, hangs from the top of the wall of the burning

building, ready to drop; the influence of Michelangelo is evident in

these three nudes. More Raphaelesque is an excited mother leaning over

the wall to hand her infant to a man stretching up on tiptoe from

below. Between magnificent columns groups of women beseech the aid

of the Pope, who from a balcony calmly bids the fire cease. Raphael

here is still at the top of his line.

For the remaining pictures in the room Raphael drew the cartoons,

perhaps helped even in this by his pupils. From these cartoons

Perino del Vaga painted, over the window, The Oath of Leo III

exculpating himself before Charlemagne (800); on the exit wall another

and greater pupil, Giulio Romano- the only native Roman prominent in

Renaissance art- pictured The Battle of Ostia, in which Leo IV

(looking remarkably like Leo X) turned back the invading Saracens

(849); and in other spaces the able pupils painted idealized portraits

of sovereigns who had deserved well of the Church. In a final picture,

The Coronation of Charlemagne, Leo X becomes Leo III; and Francis I,

here painted as Charlemagne, achieves by proxy his ambition to be

emperor. The picture echoed Leo's meeting with Francis at Bologna

the year before (1516).

Raphael made some preliminary sketches for the fourth stanza,

the Sala di Costantino; the paintings were executed after his

death under the patronage of Clement VII. Meanwhile Leo X urged him to

begin the decoration of the Loggie- i.e., the open galleries built

by Bramante to surround the court of St. Damasus in the Vatican.

Raphael himself had completed the construction of these galleries; now

(1517-9) he designed for the ceiling of one gallery fifty-two frescoes

retelling the Bible story from the Creation to the Last Judgment.

The actual painting was delegated to Giulio Romano, Gianfrancesco

Penni, Perino del Vaga, Polidoro Caldara da Caravaggio, and others;

while Giovanni da Udine decorated pilasters and arch soffits with

delightful pictures and arabesques in stucco and paint. These Loggie

frescoes sometimes used themes already treated on the Sistine ceiling,

but with a lighter hand and in a homelier and more cheerful spirit,

seeking not grandeur or sublimity, but pleasant episodes like Adam and

Eve and their children enjoying the fruits of Eden, Abraham visited by

three angels, Isaac embracing Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel at the well,

Joseph and Potiphar's wife, the finding of Moses, David and Bathsheba,

the adoration of the shepherds. These little paintings, of course,

cannot compare with Michelangelo's; they are in a different world

and genre- a world of feminine grace, not of masculine strength;

they are the sign of the lighthearted Raphael in his last five

years, while the Sistine ceiling is Michelangelo in the culmination of

his powers.

Perhaps Leo was a bit jealous of the ceiling and the glory that it

had shed upon the reign of Julius. Soon after his accession he

conceived the idea of commemorating his own pontificate by adorning

the walls of the Sistine Chapel with tapestries. There were no weavers

in Italy who could match those of Flanders, and Leo thought there were

no painters in Flanders who could equal Raphael. He commissioned the

artist (1515) to draw ten cartoons describing scenes from the Acts

of the Apostles. Seven of these cartoons were bought at Brussels by

Rubens (1630) for Charles I of England, and are now in the Victoria

and Albert Museum in London. They are among the most remarkable

drawings ever made. Raphael lavished here all his knowledge of

composition, anatomy, and dramatic effect; in the whole range of

drawing few pieces surpass The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, Christ's

Charge to Peter, The Death of Ananias, Peter Healing the Lame Man, or

Paul Preaching at Athens - though in this last the fine figure of

Paul is stolen from Masaccio's frescoes in Florence.

The ten cartoons were sent to Brussels, and there Bernaert van

Orley, who had been a pupil of Raphael in Rome, superintended the

transference of the designs to silk and wool. In the short space of

three years seven of the tapestries were completed, and all ten were

finished by 1520. On December 26, 1519, seven were hung on the Sistine

walls, and the elite of Rome were invited to see them. They created

a furore. Paris de Grassis noted in his diary: "The whole chapel was

struck dumb by the sight of these hangings; by universal consent there

is nothing more beautiful in the world." `051877 Each tapestry had

cost a total of 2000 ducats ($25,000); the expenditure for the ten

helped to deplete Leo's finances, and to induce the further sale of

indulgences and offices. *05048 Leo must have felt that now he and

Raphael had met Julius and Michelangelo in a battle of art in the same

chapel, and had carried off the prize.

The amazing fertility of Raphael- greater in his thirty-seven

years than Michelangelo's in eighty-nine- makes it difficult to

summarize him justly, for nearly every product was a masterpiece

deserving commemoration. He designed mosaics, woodwork, jewelry,

medals, pottery, bronze vessels and reliefs, perfume boxes, statues,

palaces. Michelangelo was disturbed when he heard that Raphael had

made a model, and that from this the Florentine sculptor Lorenzetto

Lotti had carved in marble, a statue of Jonah riding the whale; but

the result reassured him- Raphael had strayed unwisely out of his

pictorial element. He did better in architecture, for there his friend

Bramante guided him. About 1514, when he was put in charge of St.

Peter's, he had his friend Fabio Calvo translate Vitruvius for him

into Italian; and from that time he was an ardent lover of classical

architectural styles and forms. His continuation of Bramante's

Loggie so pleased Leo that the Pope made him director of all the

architectural and artistic departments of the Vatican. Raphael built

some undistinguished palaces in Rome, and shared in designing the

elegant Villa Madama for Cardinal Giulio de' Medici; this, however,

was chiefly the work of Giulio Romano as architect and painter, and of

Giovanni da Udine as decorator. Raphael's one surviving

architectural masterpiece is the Palazzo Pandolfini, built from his

plans after his death; it is still among the finest palaces in

Florence. With sublime indifference he turned his talents to the

service of his friend the banker Chigi, and built for him a chapel

in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, and for his horses such

stables (Stalle Chigiane, 1514) as might have served for a palace.

To understand Raphael, and Leo's Rome, we must pause for a moment

and look at the egregious Chigi.

VIII. AGOSTINO CHIGI

-

He typified a new group in Rome: rich merchants or bankers,

usually of non-Roman origin, whose wealth put the old Roman nobility

in the shade, and whose generosity to artists and writers was exceeded

only by that of popes and cardinals. Born in Siena, he had imbibed

financial subtlety with his daily food. By the age of forty-three he

was chief Italian moneylender to republics and kingdoms, Christian

or infidel. He financed trade with a dozen countries including Turkey,

and by lease from Julius II acquired a monopoly in alum and

salt. `051878 In 1511 he gave Julius an additional reason for war on

Ferrara- Duke Alfonso had dared to sell salt at a lower price than

Agostino could afford to take. `051879 His firm had branch houses in

every major Italian town, and in Constantinople, Alexandria, Cairo,

Lyons, London, Amsterdam. A hundred vessels sailed under his flag;

twenty thousand men were in his pay; a half-dozen sovereigns sent

him gifts; his best horse was from the Sultan; when he visited

Venice (to which he had lent 125,000 ducats), he was seated next to

the doge. `051880 Asked by Leo X to estimate his wealth, he

answered, perhaps for reasons of tax, that it was impossible; however,

his annual income was reckoned to be 70,000 ducats ($875,000). His

silver plate and jewelry equaled in quantity that of all the Roman

nobility combined. His bedstead was carved in ivory and encrusted with

gold and precious stones. The fixtures of his bathroom were of solid

silver. `051881 He had a dozen palaces and villas, of which the most

ornate was the Villa Chigi, on the west bank of the Tiber. Designed by

Baldassare Peruzzi, adorned with paintings by Peruzzi, Raphael,

Sodoma, Giulio Romano, and Sebastiano del Piombo, it was hailed by the

Romans, on its completion in 1512, as the lordliest palace in Rome.

The Chigi banquets had almost the reputation that those of

Lucullus had gained in Caesar's time. In the stables that Raphael

had just completed, and before they were occupied by handsomer

beasts than men, Agostino entertained Pope Leo and fourteen cardinals,

in 1518, with a repast that proudly cost him 2000 ducats ($25,000?).

At that distinguished function eleven massive silver plates were

stolen, presumably by servants in the retinue of the guests. Chigi

forbade any search, and expressed courteous astonishment that so

little had been stolen. `051882 When the feast was over, the silk

carpet, the tapestries, and the fine furniture were removed, and a

hundred horses filled the stalls.

A few months later the banker gave another dinner, this time in

the loggia of the villa, projecting out over the river. After each

course all the silver used in serving it was thrown into the Tiber

before the eyes of the guests, to assure them that no plate would be

used twice. After the banquet Chigi's servants drew up the silver from

the net that had secretly been lowered into the stream beneath the

windows of the loggia. `051883 At a dinner given in the main hall of

the villa on August 28, 1519, each guest- including Pope Leo and

twelve cardinals- was served on silver or gold plate faultlessly

engraved with his own motto, crest, and coat of arms, and was fed with

special fish, game, vegetables, fruits, delicacies, and wines

freshly imported for the occasion from his own country or locality.

Chigi tried to atone for this plebeian display of wealth by an

openhanded support of literature and art. He financed the editing of

Pindar by the scholar Cornelio Benigno of Viterbo, and set up in his

own home a press for its printing; and the Greek type cut for that

press excelled in beauty that which Aldus Manutius had used in

publishing the Odes two years before. This was the first Greek

text printed in Rome (1515). A year later the same press issued a

correct edition of Theocritus. Though himself a man of modest

education, Agostino prided himself on his friendship with Bembo,

Giovio, even Aretino; in this last case the Roman adage, pecunia

non olet - "money does not smell"- included a transitive verb. Next to

money and his mistress, Chigi loved all the forms of beauty that art

had fashioned. He rivaled Leo in commissions to artists, and led him a

merry pace in the pagan interpretation of the Renaissance. He

collected into his palaces and villas such quantities of art as

would have furnished a museum. He seems to have thought of his villa

as not merely his home, but as a public gallery of art, to which the

public might occasionally be admitted.

In that villa, at the aforementioned dinner on August 28, 1519,

Leo himself officiating, Chigi at last married the faithful mistress

with whom he had lived for the preceding eight years. Eight months

later he died, within a few days of the death of Raphael. His

estate, valued at 800,000 ducats ($10,000,000?) was divided chiefly

among his children. Lorenzo, the oldest son, led a life of

dissipation, and was adjudged insane in 1553. The Villa Chigi was sold

to the second Cardinal Alessandro Farnese for a small sum about

1580, and from that time bore the name of Farnesina.

IX. RAPHAEL: THE LAST PHASE

-

Raphael had accepted minor commissions from the jolly banker as

early as 1510. In 1514 he painted a fresco for him in the church of

Santa Maria della Pace. The space provided was narrow and irregular;

Raphael made it seem adequate by distributing in it four sibyls-

Cumaean, Persian, Phrygian, Tiburtine- pagan oracles here sterilized

with attendant angels. They are graceful figures, since Raphael

could hardly draw anything without grace; Vasari thought they were the

young master's finest work. They are a weak imitation of Angelo's

sibyls, except for the Tiburtine; here the priestess, haggard with age

and frightened by the evil fortune she is foretelling, is a figure

of original and dramatic power. According to a story not traceable

beyond the seventeenth century, some misunderstanding arose between

Raphael and Chigi's treasurer about the fee for these sibyls.

Raphael had received five hundred ducats, but, when finished,

claimed an additional payment. The treasurer thought the five

hundred already paid were all that were due. Raphael suggested that

the treasurer should appoint a competent artist to evaluate the

frescoes; the official chose Michelangelo; Raphael agreed.

Michelangelo, despite his supposed jealousy of Raphael, judged that

each head in the picture was worth one hundred ducats. When the

astonished treasurer brought this judgment to Chigi the banker ordered

him to pay Raphael at once four hundred additional ducats. "Be

tender with him," he cautioned, "so that he may be satisfied. If he

makes me pay for the draperies I shall be ruined." `051884

Chigi had to be careful, for in that same year Raphael was

painting for him a delectable fresco in the Villa Chigi- The

Triumph of Galatea. The story was taken from Politian's Giostra:

Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops, tries to seduce the nymph Galatea by

his songs and flute; she turns from him in disdain- as if to say,

Who would marry an artist?- and gives the reins to two dolphins who

pull her shell-like vessel out to sea. At her left a robust nymph is

gaily seized by a powerful Triton, while from the clouds cupids

shoot superfluous arrows to encourage love. Here the pagan Renaissance

is in full swing, and Raphael enjoys himself picturing women as his

bright imagination thought they should be formed.

In 1516 he adorned the bathroom of Cardinal Bibbiena with frescoes

glorifying Venus and the triumphs of love. In 1517 he disported

himself still more voluptuously in designs for the ceiling and

pendentives of the Villa Chigi's central hall. Here he adapted his

genial fancy to a tale from Apuleius' Metamorphoses. Psyche,

daughter of a king, arouses by her beauty the envy of Venus; the

spiteful goddess bids her son Cupid inspire Psyche with a passion

for the most contemptible man to be found. Cupid descends to the earth

to fulfill his mission, but falls in love with Psyche at first

touch. He visits her in the dark, and bids her repress her curiosity

as to who he is. Inevitably she rises from her bed one night, lights a

lamp, and is delighted to see that she has been sleeping with the most

handsome of the gods. In her excitement she lets a drop of hot oil

fall upon his divine shoulder. He awakes, berates her for her

curiosity, and leaves her in anger, not realizing that lack of

curiosity by a woman in such cases would demoralize society. Psyche

wanders over the earth disconsolate. Venus imprisons Cupid for

disobeying his mother, and complains to Jupiter that celestial

discipline is deteriorating. Jupiter sends Mercury to fetch Psyche,

who then becomes the abused slave of Venus. Cupid escapes from his

confinement, and begs Jove to grant him Psyche. The puzzled god,

torn as usual between opposing prayers, summons the Olympian deities

to debate the matter. He himself, susceptible to youthful male charms,

sides with Cupid; the complaisant gods vote to free Psyche, to make

her a goddess, and to give her to Cupid; and in the final scene they

celebrate with an ambrosial banquet the nuptials of Cupid and

Psyche. We are assured that the story is a pious allegory, in which

Psyche represents the human soul, which, when purified by suffering,

is admitted to paradise. But Raphael and Chigi saw in the myth no

religious symbolism, but a chance to contemplate perfect male and

female forms. Yet there is in Raphael's sensualism a refinement and

grace that disarms puritan criticism; apparently the genial Leo

found in them nothing to reprove. Only the figures and composition

here are Raphael's; Giulio Romano and Francesco Penni painted the

scenes from his designs, and Giovanni da Udine added enticing

enclosing wreaths burgeoning with fruits and flowers. The school of

Raphael had become a transmission belt whose end product was almost

certain to be some form of loveliness.

Never were pagan and Christian so agreeably merged as in Raphael.

This same worldly youth who lived like a prince and loved many women

transiently, and (if one may venture such an anomaly) frolicked on

ceilings with male and female nudes, painted in these same years

(1513-20) some of the most appealing pictures in the gamut of history.

With all his guileless sensualism he always returned to the Madonna as

his favorite theme; fifty times he pictured her. Sometimes a pupil

helped him, as in the Madonna dell' Impannata; but for the most part

he worked on this type of painting with his own hand, and with a touch

of the old Umbrian piety. Now (1515) he painted the Sistine

Madonna for the convent of San Sisto at Piacenza: *05049 a perfect

pyramidal composition; the convincing realism of the old martyr St.

Sixtus; the demure St. Barbara, a bit too beautiful and too splendidly

gowned; the Virgin's green robe, over a touch of red, blown by

heaven's winds; the Child quite human in His disheveled innocence; the

simple rosy face of the Madonna, a little sad and wondering (as if

La Fornarina, who may have posed for this picture, realized her

disqualifications); the curtains drawn aside by angels behind the

Virgin, admitting her to paradise: this is the favorite picture of all

Christendom, the most widely loved product of Raphael's hand. Almost

as fine, and perhaps more moving despite its traditional form, is The

Holy Family under the Oak Tree (Prado), also called La Perla,

"The Pearl Madonna." In the Madonna della Sedia or Seggiola

(Pitti) the mood is less evangelical, more human; the Madonna is a

young Italian mother, buxom and quietly passionate; clasping her fat

babe with possessive and protective love, while he nestles timidly

against her, as if he had heard some myth of massacred innocents.

One such Madonna could atone for many Fornarinas.

Raphael painted relatively few pictures of Christ. His buoyant

spirit shrank from the contemplation or portrayal of suffering; or

perhaps, like Leonardo, he realized the impossibility of

representing the divine. In 1517, probably with the collaboration of

Penni, he painted Christ Bearing the Cross for the convent of

Santa Maria dello Spasimo in Palermo, whence the picture came to be

called Lo Spasimo di Sicilia. According to Vasari it had an

adventurous career: the ship that carried it to Sicily was lost in a

storm; the crated painting floated safely over the waters, and

landed at Genoa; "even the fury of the winds and waves," said

Vasari, "respected such painting." It was shipped again, and was set

up in Palermo, where "it became more famous than the mountain of

Vulcan." `051886 In the seventeenth century Philip IV of Spain had

it secretly transferred to Madrid. Christ in this picture is merely an

exhausted and defeated man, conveying no sense of a mission accepted

and fulfilled. Raphael succeeded better in suggesting divinity in The

Vision of Ezekiel, though here again he borrows his majestic God from

Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.

To this crowded period belongs the St. Cecilia, almost as

popular as the Sistine Madonna. A Bolognese lady, in the fall of

1513, announced that she had heard heavenly voices bidding her

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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