Renaissance in Italy, Volume 3 (of 7): The Fine ArtsSymonds, John Addington
History
Renaissance in Italy, Volume 3 (of 7): The Fine Arts
Symonds, John Addington
Art, Italian
So delicate was the assimilative tendency in Raphael, that what he learned
from all his teachers, from Perugino, Fra Bartolommeo, Masaccio, Da Vinci,
Michael Angelo, and the antique, was mingled with his own style without
sacrifice of individuality. Inferior masters imitated him, and passed
their pictures off upon posterity as Raphael's; but to mistake a genuine
piece of his painting for the performance of another is almost impossible.
Each successive step he made was but a liberation of his genius, a stride
toward the full expression of the beautiful he saw and served. He was
never an eclectic. The masterpieces of other artists taught him how to
comprehend his own ideal.
Raphael is not merely a man, but a school. Just as in his genius he
absorbed and comprehended many diverse styles, so are many worthy
craftsmen included in his single name. Fresco-painters, masters of the
easel, workmen in mosaic and marquetrie, sculptors, builders,
arras-weavers, engravers, decorators of ceilings and of floors, all
laboured under his eye, receiving designs from, his hand, and executing
what was called thereafter by his name.[258] It was thus partly by his
facility and energy, partly by the use he made of other men, that Raphael
was able to achieve so much. In the Vatican he covered the walls and
ceilings of the Stanze with historical and symbolical frescoes that
embrace the whole of human knowledge. The cramping limits of
ecclesiastical tradition are transcended. The synod of the antique sages
finds a place beside the synod of the Fathers and the company of Saints.
Parnassus and the allegory of the virtues front each other. The legend of
Marsyas and the mythus of the Fall are companion pictures. A new
catholicity, a new orthodoxy of the beautiful, appears. The Renaissance in
all its breadth and liberality of judgment takes ideal form. Nor is there
any sense of discord; for the genius of Raphael views both revelations,
Christian and pagan, from a point of view of art above them. To his pure
and unimpeded faculty the task of translating motives so diverse into
mutually concordant shapes was easy. On the domed ceilings of the Loggie
he painted sacred history in a series of exquisitely simple compositions,
known as Raphael's Bible. The walls and pilasters were adorned with
arabesques that anticipated the discovery of Pompeii, and surpassed the
best of Roman frescoes in variety and freedom. With his own hands he
coloured the incomparable "Triumph of Galatea" in Agostino Chigi's villa
on the Tiber, while his pupils traced the legend of Cupid and Psyche from
his drawings on the roof of the great banquet hall. Remaining within the
circuit of Rome, we may turn from the sibyls of S. Maria della Pace to the
genii of the planets in S. Maria del Popolo, from the "Violin-player" of
the Sciarra palace to the "Transfiguration" in the Vatican: wherever we
go, we find the masterpieces of this youth, so various in conception, so
equal in performance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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