The steps of this re-education are most interesting. In 1505 he did the
portraits of Agnolo Doni and his wife Maddalena, Figure 182. The posture
of the woman is that of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. The draughtsmanship and
characterization are severe, the hint of Umbrian landscape is a
survival. In later portraits we shall see the elimination of
accessories, the line yielding to the most refined modelling in light
and dark, the effect concentrated without insistency. A comparison of
the Doni portraits with those of ten years later, the Julius II and the
Fornarina, will tell better than words of the tendency of Raphael’s
portraiture towards its ultimate mastery.
In 1505 Raphael returned for a time to Perugino to paint the fresco of
the Trinity at the Convent of San Severo. In the splendid geometrical
pattern he has already improved on the flat groupings of Perugino. The
consistory of Saints bends back in depth after the fashion of a
semi-dome. Raphael borrows the new motive from Fra Bartolommeo’s fresco
of the Last Judgment painted in 1499 for the Florentine Hospital of
Santa Maria Nuova. Sixteen years later Perugino added the languid saints
at the base of the Trinity, a touching reversal of the natural relations
of master and pupil. As for Raphael, in a single experiment he has
mastered the sort of symmetrical composition in depth which should
suffice within five years for his masterpiece, the Disputa.
[Illustration:
FIG. 183. Raphael. Madonna del Granduca.—_Pitti._
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 184. Raphael. La Belle Jardinière.—_Louvre._
]
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