Raphael

Tom Henry, 2024

Extracted from:
Carol Plazzotta and Tom Henry, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings: Volume IV, Raphael (London: The National Gallery, 2022).

Raphael is one of the most famous artists of all time and has been loved and admired across the world, and especially in Great Britain, for centuries. Raphael (Raffaello di Giovanni Santi) was born in the Marchigian hilltop city state of Urbino at Easter in 1483 (either on 28/29 March or 6/7 April). His mother, Magia di Battista Ciarla (d. 1491), died when he was eight years old. His father, Giovanni Santi (active 1469–1494), a painter and poet at the court of the Montefeltro dukes of Urbino, died three years later, when his son was 11. Raphael, who inherited half of his father’s estate, was brought up by his paternal uncle, Bartolomeo, a priest, who also lived in Urbino. The Montefeltro were famous both as mercenary generals and discerning patrons of the arts, with strong connections to the papal court in Rome. This combination of artistic pedigree and court connections partly explains the young Raphael’s meteoric rise to become one of the most successful and internationally renowned artists of the Italian Renaissance. It is now widely accepted that, as a youth, Raphael received at least a rudimentary training from Santi. The first documents regarding Raphael’s activity as an artist (he was named as a master at the age of 17, in 1500) show him working with the artist Evangelista da Pian di Meleto (about 1460–1549), who had previously worked for Giovanni Santi and had been a trusted member of his household from at least 1483. It is possible that his training continued in Urbino after his father’s death, since his earliest works, datable to the period 1500–2, are clearly based on his father’s art. On the other hand, the artist’s biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) and other early commentators traced Raphael’s apprenticeship to the workshop of the leading Umbrian painter of the time, Pietro Perugino (about 1450–1523). While it is beyond doubt that Raphael modelled his style very closely on Perugino’s in the years 1502 to 1504/5, and that he almost certainly had direct contact with him, a formal apprenticeship any earlier is not accepted by all writers and not by the present authors. One also needs to explain the fact that his earliest works (1500–2) are more evidently related to his father’s art than to Perugino’s.

Raphael’s first recorded activity as a painter was in (or for) Città di Castello where he painted three altarpieces (including the Mond Crucifixion, NG 3943) and a banner, 1500–4. From late 1502 he seems to have worked increasingly in Perugia where he went on to paint several altarpieces (including the Colonna Altarpiece, with its predella depicting the Procession to Calvary, NG 2919; the Ansidei Madonna, NG 1171, with its predella depicting Saint John the Baptist preaching, NG 6480), and a fresco in the period 1502/3–7, receiving a number of other smaller commissions as well. In addition to evident contact with Perugino, he was befriended by Bernardino Pintoricchio (about 1454–1513) and had a role in designing paintings executed by the elder artist and his workshop in the town of Fratta (modern‐day Umbertide) and Siena. From 1504/5 and until 1508, Raphael also spent time in Florence, and the overlaps in these dates suggest the extent to which the artist moved around in his early years (periods back in his home town of Urbino are also documented, and it was probably during one of these that the Dream of a Knight, NG 213, was painted for a court patron). In Florence Raphael modified his style again, inspired by the work of fifteenth‐century Tuscan artists, among them Masaccio (1401–1428/9?) and Donatello (1386–1466), as well as benefiting from direct contact with his older contemporaries Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and Michelangelo (1475–1564) who were especially influential on the young artist’s development. In addition to varying his drawing style and technique in response to these new stimuli, Raphael embarked on a study of the male nude and developed a greater awareness of contrapposto, both newly visible in his art at this time (Saint Catherine of Alexandria, NG 168, is a prime example). He painted an important series of Madonnas for patrons in Florence and elsewhere (for example, the Madonna of the Pinks, NG 6596), but received only one altarpiece commission for the city, which he left incomplete when he was summoned to work for the Della Rovere Pope Julius II (r. 1503–13) in Rome in 1508, a few months after the Pope’s nephew had succeeded his uncle as Duke of Urbino. It seems highly likely that armed with or preceded by letters of recommendation from the Urbino court, Raphael arrived in papal Rome in the summer or autumn of 1508.

Rome remained Raphael’s home for the rest of his life. The opportunity to work in the Stanze (papal apartments) of the Vatican Palace offered to him by Julius II established his contemporary and posthumous fame. He worked in fresco, his first lucid forays into grand and eloquent designs sealing his reputation in the papal reception rooms, the Stanza della Segnatura (1508/9–11) and the Stanza di Eliodoro (1511–14). The success of his work there saw other artists being progressively displaced; in some cases their work was torn down to make way for the revolutionary frescoed compositions of the young artist from Urbino. Alongside these commitments in the Vatican, Raphael also found time to paint portraits (including that of Pope Julius himself, NG 27), Madonnas (including the Garvagh Madonna, NG 744, and the Mackintosh Madonna, NG 2069) and to embark on a long and fruitful working relationship with the rich Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi (1466–1520). Chigi was the first patron to commission architectural designs from Raphael, whose practice as an architect became increasingly important to his activity as the 1510s progressed, especially after he succeeded Donato Bramante (1444–1514) as architect of St Peter’s in 1514. He also began to take on altarpiece commissions, predominantly for export from Rome (Piacenza and Naples in the early 1510s; Palermo, Bologna, Perugia and Narbonne in the years before his death).

After Julius’s death in 1513 Raphael became even more fundamental to the artistic strategy of the new Pope, Leo X (r. 1513–21). He was called upon to design a spectacular set of tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (most of these survive in the Vatican Museums; seven preparatory cartoons are on loan from the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London). He continued and added to the projects that had been undertaken in the Vatican Palace by completing further rooms in the papal apartments, the Stanza di Eliodoro and then the Stanza dell’Incendio (1514–17), before turning to the Loggia of Leo X (1517–18) and the initial planning (and perhaps execution) of the Sala di Costantino (1519–24). Increasingly, these varied and manifold projects saw him turning to an expanded workshop to assist in production and in some cases design. He came to rely on the not insignificant talents of the painters Giulio Romano (1492/9–1546) and Giovanni da Udine (1487–1561) and of the printmaker Marcantonio Raimondi (about 1480–1534), as well as the less easily definable talents of GianFrancesco Penni (1496–1528) who, with Giulio, was widely recognised as Raphael’s artistic heir. Raphael also involved himself in a very serious study of ancient art, commissioning draughtsmen to work for him across Italy (and beyond), engaging Fabio Calvo (about 1450–1527) to produce an Italian translation of Vitruvius’ De architectura, and collaborating with Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529) on a written manifesto for the treatment of antiquities (the so‐called Letter to Leo X) that seems to have been designed to accompany a project to systematically study and recreate ancient Rome. In addition to his work on St Peter’s, Raphael turned his hand to villa design with the initial planning of the Villa Madama for Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici (1478–1534), who was also the patron of Raphael’s last great altarpiece, the Transfiguration (about 1519–20), a picture made in competition with the Raising of Lazarus (NG 1) by Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–1547). Raphael continued to be active as a painter for Agostino Chigi, Leo X and other patrons, and his fame and works were exported within his lifetime to England and especially to France and the court of François I (1494–1547).

Raphael died on the night of Good Friday 6–7 April 1520. He was hugely mourned, especially by the large retinue of artists who accompanied him to his burial place in the Pantheon and by the literary figures and ambassadors who either celebrated his achievements or reported the news of his untimely demise (Raphael was just 37) in their correspondence. Some of his projects were brought to completion by his workshop (for example, the Sala di Costantino and at least part of his original vision for the Villa Madama), but his enterprise could not survive the loss of its master and soon thereafter of his patron Leo X (d. 1521). The departure of Giulio Romano for Mantua in 1524 brought this initial continuation by his team to an end, and this became even more definitive following the depredations of the Sack of Rome in 1527.

It is tempting to say that Raphael’s death ushered in the phase of his artistic afterlife and collecting of his works, but in truth his influence and fame were so enormous that even his drawings had begun to be collected during his lifetime. For example, Raphael’s friend and colleague Timoteo Viti (1469–1523) took a large group of his early drawings to Urbino, many of which subsequently formed the core of the astonishingly rich holdings of Raphael drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the British Museum, London. The Royal Collection also acquired works by Raphael, including Charles I’s (1600–1649) purchase of Raphael’s tapestry cartoons in 1623. The ten Raphaels in the National Gallery reached the collection through a number of different channels. Lord Robert Spencer’s (1747–1831) acquisition on behalf of his brother the 4th Duke of Marlborough (1739–1817) of the Ansidei Altarpiece (NG 1171), with its predella (NG 6480), from the monks of S. Fiorenzo in Perugia in 1768, were the first Raphaels in the National Gallery to reach British shores. The main altarpiece was eventually bought by the Gallery from the Marlborough family with the aid of a government grant. At a similar date the 3rd Earl Cowper (1738‐1789) was also acquiring works by the artist in Italy. Other wealthy aristocrats, including the 2nd Earl of Dudley (1817–1885) (NG 3943) and the 4th Duke of Northumberland (1792–1865) (NG 6596), also purchased Raphaels from Italy, and their heirs were eventually tempted to part with these works for hefty sums. Monied collectors such as William Beckford (1760–1844) (NG 168) and Ludwig Mond (1839–1909) (NG 3943) acquired their Raphaels in England and either sold, or in the latter case and that of Eva Mackintosh (1843–1935), bequeathed them to the National Gallery.