The young angel could do without wings. He seems to draw all the strength to jump and fly from himself, from his flexible hips, agile legs, muscular arms with which he gains momentum. He seems happy when he takes off, like someone who knows what he can do and who is enough for himself. Raphael has twirled this body study onto the sheet of paper with well-aimed strokes, and it does not appear as if he tied artificial angel wings around the boy who sat for him as a model or otherwise urged him to adopt an uncomfortable pose.
Raffael draws, paints and thinks so close to the body that one wonders how the Renaissance man, long after his death, could become the epitome of ethereal grandeur and unworldly perfection. A large exhibition in London’s National Gallery is now doing away with some of the artist clichés surrounding the young man who died early. It was actually planned for the 500th anniversary of death two years ago, but then Corona came. And maybe the shift is a good thing. Perhaps today, after two years of pandemic and in a rapidly changing world, contemporaries are more receptive to what Raffael has to tell.
Drawing of an angel.
(Photo: Raffael/Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford)
It starts with the very physical: up until the spring of 2020, in parts of the Western world it was possible to distract oneself from one’s own physicality, sink into digital parallel worlds and consider oneself to be purely a mental being, but the pandemic confronted everyone with the simple truth: you have no body, you are one, and a vulnerable and always mortal one. Raphael knew that. With him, as was common in the philosophy of his time, movements of the body are always also movements of the soul.
Once Mary holds the Annunciation Angel at a distance with a raised hand, she shows her surprise. When Saint Paul scratches his beard and turns his shoulder to us, he is deep in thought. And when Saint Catherine leans on her wheel, the instrument of torture, she does so with a skillful turning movement towards the sky: the intellectual among the martyrs is sure of what she is doing. You can see Raffael’s people by their body language, how they are and what they think.
Also because of such portraits, the Renaissance is considered an epoch that celebrates the individual
This carefully compiled show with its more than 90 works, all created by Raffael or based on his designs, reminds us of something else: people need each other. Raffael is a relationship painter. This begins with the archetype of human contact, the mother with the baby. Raphael’s Madonnas, often still youthful, play with the young Jesus, gently supporting him on the buttocks and back, enjoying his friendship with the boy John. Standing by one another and supporting one another is one of Raffael’s leitmotifs. Joseph relieves Maria of taking care of the children. Later, the mourners around Christ’s body comfort each other. And in Raffael’s own reality, too, there must have been a desire for cohesion. Once he paints himself with his collaborator Giulio Romano. They look not dissimilar: both dressed in black over a white shirt that is far too clean, both with dark beards and large, alert eyes. Raffael lets his fellow painter go first and signals his support with a hand on his shoulder. He looks at him and up. At the same time, Giulio points out of the pictorial space with his hand, as if he wanted to point the master either to the viewer or to an easel that is not shown.
Self-portrait of Raphael (left) with colleague Giulio Romano.
(Photo: Raffael/Paris, Musée du Louvre)
Michelangelo, Leonardo or Titian would not have thought of presenting themselves as team workers in such a demonstrative manner. Nor were they compared to Raphael. He encouraged his employees without envy when he had to paint the stanze, the private rooms of Pope Julius II, in the Vatican. And he relies on collaborations that are also of use to him: He has the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi translate those designs into prints that the Pope did not want to see implemented on his walls. They circulate throughout Europe even before the paintings are ready in the stanzas. The networker Raffael knows how to advertise on his own behalf.
He soon went out and in with the intellectuals of Rome, painted them, and became friends. The writer Baldassare Castiglione recognizes in him the ideal courtier, an educated, lithe young man who seems to do everything with ease but in fact works hard. Castiglione’s touching portrait can be seen in London: a man dressed in noble black and gray tones, who looks at the world and his painter with warm blue eyes. Castiglione’s wife is said to have liked the portrait so much that she placed it at the dining table in her husband’s absence.
Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione
(Photo: Raffael/Paris, Musée du Louvre)
the Renaissance Also because of such portraits, is considered an era that celebrates the individual, a time when people take their feelings and thoughts seriously and recognize each other as individuals. That’s correct. But it would be a modern fallacy to assume that this is also an epoch of radical individualism. It is Raphael in particular who proves otherwise.
He does this first and foremost in the stanzas, for which preliminary works can be seen in the show. The basic principle of those frescoes that were created under Julius II is unity in diversity. Raphael shows communities, something like that of philosophers and scientists in the “School of Athens” or that of artists, poets and muses in “Parnassus”. They are made up of very different individuals with different approaches. Thus Aristotle and Plato debate at the center of the “School of Athens”; on the “Parnassus” Sappho, Dante and Homer come together. What Raffael is showing here is diversity in practice. However, this does not lead to the division of the individual communities, but rather strengthens them – just as the entire pictorial program ultimately strengthens the papacy, which Raphael is able to gather very different milieus and actors under one roof.
So he is not only the body and friendship painter, he is also a man who brings the utopia of a modern political system to the people. This is based (unlike in the reality of the Raphael years) not primarily on violence, but on trust and the knowledge of how productive differences can be. That is why mediocrity certainly does not prevail in Raphael, he does not advocate uniformity – but he is just as uninterested in people who only pursue their particular interests.
No god speaks here, but also no bore, but an artist who can always have something to say.
These, too, are certainly images and ideas that today’s people can benefit from if they are willing to do so. Finally, during the pandemic and during Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, an individualism that cares nothing for communal values is reaching its limits.
The good thing about the London exhibition is that it argues so close to the originals. A wide spectrum has come together, from large altars such as that of Saint Cecilia from Bologna to carpets based on Raphael’s designs and his architectural drawings. The visual impressions are so diverse and so convincing that the curators can do without explicitly explaining again how Raphael was deified only after his death until the time of Goethe and then despised by modernity, both times because of his sense of harmony. The works themselves refute both: no god speaks here, but also no bore. But an artist who can always have something to say. And the present especially.
raphael National Gallery in London until July 31. Catalog in the exhibition 35 British pounds.