Original subtitles

Good afternoon. Today I'd like to continue with Raphael and in a special way I want to talk about

the history paintings of Raphael. I don't know whether I've used the term history paintings as

a category. It is something which is quite important in the history of art and I'll say

a little more about it now. The category of history painting, that is to say grand narrative painting

of scenes from the Catholic religious tradition or from mythology or from political and military

history, was not invented in the Renaissance but it was the artists of the 15th and 16th century

who raised it to the level that it was to occupy until the post-Napoleonic period. It's best understood

not merely as storytelling but as the way the human body can express the stories. While Leonardo

and Michelangelo both made extraordinary contributions to this repertoire, it was probably Raphael who had

the most long-lasting impact upon history painting by virtue of the characteristics of clarity, balance,

and the complete integration of figures, not just figures, but noble figures, into measured volumes

of space. The word idealism might have been coined for Raphael's art and despite the vicissitudes of historical

criticism, his serenity has most often been seen as the embodiment of the Renaissance. Raphael's history

paintings. His narrative subjects are of epical importance. Most of them are virtual definitions of the high

Renaissance style. I'm showing you first a relatively early Raphael narrative scene, The Entombment, painted in

1507, today in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, but it was painted for a church in Perugia, where you recall he studied with

Perugino. And this painting of the Entombment is still, in a sense, despite its date from the early Cinquecento, it is still

quattrocento in composition, which is to say the figures are arranged in a frieze across the front of the panel. It's carefully

choreographed, both in the studied rhythms of the many feet, look at the bottom of the of the painting and see how many feet have been

placed there, the many feet that must suggest urgency and give support at the same time, and an equal amount of attention has been

paid to the grouping of the heads. Everything is disposed here in terms of movement and counter-movement, push and pull, effectively

turning action into stasis, making it static. The way in which Christ's body is carried is striking. The way it's supported, the cloth

underneath it, carried almost like an emergency stretcher here to carry the body, but the body is not covered. It is exposed, and exposed to the

even more because the two figures who are principally carrying it, lean away from it, lean back, opening it up. So there's a great

emphasis upon the body of Christ. And in this very beautiful image, you can see the wound in his side, the wound in his right hand, and that in his

right foot as well. The color of this, the colors of the palette that he uses, are really extraordinarily beautiful here.

Very bold. I think we have here a young artist who is not afraid to step boldly into the fray, but who has taken on a very complex

subject, inspired, I'm sure, by the example of Leonardo da Vinci, when you realize the complexity of the groupings of heads and figures, the women at the

right as much as the men at the left. This is something which he is striving to master, and there's a certain awkwardness, but not an unpleasant

awkwardness, because it gives a certain fresh urgency to the painting. But the colors are wonderful. He's very bold in his use of

greens and reds and odd colors, such as the pink color of the loincloth of Christ. The move from over in the women kneeling on the

right-hand side from blue to an orange-red to a gold-brown, and up into this lavender color of the fainting, the dress of the

fainting Mary on the right-hand side. There is a landscape, but the landscape is placed way back. It's hardly, one can't say there's any

development from the foreground into the landscape. It's simply back there above the figures, really, but of course it's

significant because at the right-hand side we have Calvary. There are the three crosses still standing on the hill at the

back right. In addition, what we see of it is a very fresh landscape, very green, very lovely, with lovely clouds, very

very much an Italian landscape from the area of Umbria where Perugia is.

This is now the mature Raphael. In fact, just as I had done with Michelangelo, we're skipping over a big group of things, the

things that he had done in the Vatican for the Pope. So I'm showing you a very mature work by him. It is in the

Villa Farnesina in Rome. The Villa Farnesina is on the other side of the Tiber, from the main part of Rome, Trastevere, and

in fact it's more or less opposite the Farnese Palace. It was not built as the Villa Farnesina, which is of course a

derivation of Farnese. The Farnese bought it later as a kind of adjunct to their main palace on the opposite side of the

river, but it was built instead by a Sienese banker of great wealth whose name was Augustino Chigi, and he set himself up in

Rome as a banker, that was his center, and he was very happy to loan money to the Vatican for all the projects of the

Popes, and of course get a good return on it. He built this villa, which is a pleasure villa in every sense of the word, essentially

for his mistress who was a renowned courtesan. The decoration of the Villa Farnesina was thoroughly secular. It was a

mythological and classical paradise, and meant to inspire good times. A famous story is told of a dinner party that

Agostino Chigi held, in which the dinner service was of gold. It was solid gold. And at the end of each course the

servants threw the dishes out the window into the Tiber, into the river. Of course there were nets in the river to

collect and return the dishes afterward, after the guests had left. But this is the kind of excess that is

suggested by the villa. I'm sorry we can't digress and spend much time in the villa, but Raphael, who was not a main

part of the team which decorated the Farnesina, who did this particularly, this one famous work, sort of took the prize as a

result of the result of it. The Galatea, and it's just part of the story, the only part that seems to have

interested him, he takes the mythological scene in which Galatea is fleeing from the giant who lusted after her,

Polyphemus. And she is fleeing with a kind of entourage here. This was frescoed on the wall, on a wall, of the

Villa Farnesina, about 1513-14. And it was a room that was supposed to be called the Galatea room and was

supposed to have scenes all around it of similar mythological import, but it was never completed.

This stands almost alone in that particular room. Raphael depicts the mythological theme with high

Renaissance compositional unity. The frieze arrangement that we saw in the entombment is replaced here by the

magnificent central spiral of the sea nymph Galatea, one of the great inventions, compositionally or rather

figuratively composed compositions, that one will find in the Renaissance. This is the epitome of

contrapposto, of throwing the body, the weight of the body, onto one leg and the body then into an S-curve

and then twisting it as well, so that she turns, she's moving to our right, she turns back and looks to our left.

An extraordinary rush of movement is suggested. Galatea was a sea nymph or Neread, and she is accompanied by

many of her comrades, tritons and other sea gods and goddesses. You'll see this pose again, by the way,

because he had already used this pose for a male figure in one of the frescoes in the Vatican, and I will

point it out at that time. But he reuses it here for a mythological figure in this pleasure villa.

There are a group of tritons and Nereads, the sea gods and goddesses, on either side of her,

and they anchor her in the center of this composition. Three Amorini, for want of a better

phrase, little Amors, they're not Cupid with a capital C, because Cupid belongs, there's only one

and he belongs to Venus, but they are little winged love figures, and they all have bows like Cupid, and

because of their triangular position above the head of Galatea, one above and two on the sides,

they anchor the figure right in the center of the composition. They're, of course, firing love arrows

at her, as Cupid would. Her seashell chariot, you see she is being pulled in a large shell, is drawn by

two giant dolphins. And the ardent giant Polyphemus, who pursues her, is not in the picture

at all, though she is looking back and up at him, but he was painted separately in a different fresco

by another artist, Sebastiano del Piombo, whom I had mentioned in passing once before. But in any event,

she is looking at something outside the confines of Raphael's own fresco, kind of animating of the larger

space of the room. The central axis, it's a wonderful composition, and very complex in a sense.

Central axis of Galatea, strong vertical, moving straight up, held strongly by these angels in place,

but also this gives you an X composition, upper left to lower right, a very strong composition,

through the reins of the dolphins here. And again, from lower left, following this couple, up through

the slightly turned torso of Galatea and the arrow above. So an X shape, which again holds things.

It's a kind of perfection of balance in this painting, yet at the same time it represents a rush

of dramatic movement to the right, as we look at it. That is extraordinary, and it is a summation

of a pictorial ideal that would serve as inspiration and frustration for many artists in the future.

I ought to point out her hair, because often one doesn't even realize the blending of her hair and her cloak,

which continue in the same triangular movement back behind her and to the left, and give the sense of the wind,

which is rushing through. But her reddish blonde hair is here, and then the cloak continues the movement of it,

and gives us a sense of the rushing movement, even as everything is held in this wonderful stasis.

Both Raphael's lean and wiry entombment, which we saw, a kind of youthful work,

and the magnificent full-blooded Galatea of his maturity, share a notable characteristic.

Dramatic action and movement are counterbalanced through composition or pose, achieving stasis and balance.

That's a kind of small definition of a Renaissance work of art.

The second of these works, the Galatea, was of course created in Rome,

and it is the style of Raphael's Roman works that now concerns us.

In his monumental frescoes for the stanzae, S-T-A-N-Z-E, it is the plural, stanzae, stanzae, meaning simply rooms,

but always used to describe, with Raphael, the official papal apartments in the Vatican

that were being decorated under the direction of the Pope, Julius II.

He began work on these monumental frescoes in a series of rooms at the same time that Michelangelo was working on the Sistine ceiling,

in the very nearby chapel.

And it is in these rooms, in the stanzae, that Raphael established the canon for future history painting.

There are two paintings in particular that are world-famous, of course, and just icons of Western art that we must talk about.

They are the Disputa and the School of Athens.

They are intellectual history paintings.

They are not about events, but about theological and philosophical ideas.

And that they manage to succeed, especially the latter, the School of Athens,

in becoming embedded in the visual consciousness of the Western world,

despite the fact that they're very abstruse in subject,

is astonishing when you stop to think about it.

If I may, before I begin to look with you at these works in the stanzae,

I think it's important to stress something that was implicit in our study of the Sistine ceiling, but not stated.

The works of art made in the Vatican in the first and second decade of the Cinquecento, the 16th century,

were by nature closed away from the experience of most persons.

Unlike the situation that prevailed in Florence during the Quattrocento,

where much, even most, of the greatest early Renaissance art was in churches and other public places

and could be seen by virtually all of Florentine society,

the creations of Michelangelo, Raphael, and other high Renaissance artists working in the Vatican

was usually, not always, but usually closed to most people.

It was open to the clergy, to the aristocracy, to invited guests,

to artists fortunate enough to know somebody.

And there were pilgrims, and I should emphasize that at least in the Sistine Chapel,

pilgrims could, on occasion, come in in larger numbers, but not in the private papal apartments

that were decorated by Raphael.

Let me take this thought through to a logical conclusion.

Much of the greatest art of the high Renaissance was in the Vatican,

and was therefore a sort of hothouse plant whose seeds could not germinate freely

and be spread openly to a large public and myriad artists.

Leonardo's art was an exception.

And we recall the story of people flocking to see a painting of Leonardo's when it was,

or a large cartoon, when it was on public display, as if going to a festival.

That opportunity didn't come often to Raphael and to Michelangelo,

and how little of Leonardo's art there was.

There were other artists working in the high Renaissance style in Florence, for instance, and elsewhere,

and in more public situations.

But I still think that the fact that the Vatican's definitive treasures,

these great history paintings of Raphael, the Sistine ceiling, remained hidden,

is of great significance.

Because the period of the famous high Renaissance lasted probably, by the most generous estimate,

a little more than 40 years.

It was probably destined to such a short life even if political events had not hastened its end.

End of aside, end of sermonette.

Let me show you a view of the most famous of the Stanza in the Vatican by Raphael,

decorated by Raphael, the Stanza della Segnatura, S-E-G-N-A-T-U-R-A.

I'll explain it in a moment.

In 158, Raphael was among the artists working on the decoration of one of the private apartments of Julius II.

It was the library of the Pope, and it was situated near his bedroom.

It is not certain how Raphael became involved in the project,

although Perugino had done the ceiling decoration of an adjoining apartment.

Soon the painting of the entire room, the Stanza, devolved to Raphael.

Later in the century, the room became known, later, as the Stanza della Segnatura,

which roughly translates as Signature Room,

after the name of the Papal Tribunal which was held there, whose acts the Pope signed.

What you're looking at, and I will show it to you closer in a few moments,

but what you're looking at across the room, this gives you an idea of the size of the Stanza della Segnatura,

is one of the walls and part of another, and you're looking at the School of Athens.

So you can see how it situates itself, dominating one wall of the room with a great arched top.

But we're going to look first at the painting opposite it, and that painting is the Disputa.

D-I-S-P-U-T-A, and with the accent at the end, Disputa, painted between 158 and 1511.

It means simply the Disputation, but again, it's become so embedded as the title,

the proper title of this work of art that it is most often used.

Late in 158, Raphael was probably working on the design for this painting, the Disputa,

which is on one of the large walls.

It's assumed that this is one of his first works in the room,

because of the large amount of secco painting, the pigment applied to the dry plaster.

We've talked about it.

You have true fresco, the color in the plaster, and you have secco added on for various reasons afterward,

including if you are not too competent yet in the fresco technique.

He was still a bit unsure in that technique, at least that is suggested by the large amount of secco work that is here.

The painting was probably finished in 159.

The theological subject is the Disputation over the Sacrament.

We've encountered the sacrament before, and the discussion of its meaning and how it has entered into art.

The Disputation over the Sacrament. The central meaning or mystery of the Sacrament is the Incarnation.

And in what way the Mass represents the Incarnation.

All of this is what is, in a sense, being discussed by the figures in this painting.

That Disputa, as I say, is an Italian-Latin form, and it's, in art historical writing, the title always given to this.

In the two-tiered composition, you have a group on the earthly level and another group on clouds in the heavens.

The heavenly segment consists of God the Father at the very top, right here, in the golden rays, and then Christ, the Holy Ghost, the dove of the Holy Ghost below, the Virgin Mary to the left, John the Baptist to the right of Christ,

and an array of a dozen saints and patriarchs seated in a semi-circular, apse-like space.

We have Old Testament and New Testament figures alternating on this upper tier.

The lower level depicts a convention of theologians and others from St. Jerome to Dante, flanking an altar with the monstrance that is right here, the great altar instrument which held the host.

The monstrance is in the center and, in a sense, combines the two parts of the composition.

It bridges them to some degree. It contains the host, the consecrated bread, representing the body of Christ.

And these figures gathered around below are avidly disputing the proper understanding of the rite of the sacrament.

They're not in agreement. They're probably not in agreement yet.

It's one of those mysteries that has always been both much discussed and debated and, at the same time, central to Catholic Christianity in particular.

St. Gregory the Great, by the way, is one of the forefathers of the Church here around the altar.

He's found to the left of the altar. He's wearing a tiara, and when you look at his portrait, you realize he's a portrait of Julius II.

So, Pope Julius II has incorporated himself into this painting as well, or Raphael has. We don't know who made the suggestion.

Then come other fathers of the Church, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, a figure looking up from a book over here as though he's been ignoring the whole thing.

Somebody gets his attention. He may be intended as a skeptic or a recent convert to the doctrine of the Trinity.

The great scoop of space which he has created here is a marvel. He's given us an absolutely convincing semi-circle of space,

which in a sense corresponds with the arch of the wall above it and gives us a wonderfully convincing and deep space.

Opposite it is the School of Athens. Again, between 158 and 1511, he turned to this subject, probably after finishing the Disputa,

and he painted here a philosophical subject, but different, because whereas the Disputa, a theological subject, focuses on one thing, one aspect of the faith,

the philosophical side covers a plethora of different philosophies, different possible discussions.

The painting called the School of Athens, it has much less secco painting, and Raphael clearly has mastered his medium here by about 1510.

The title is a later title, again 18th century in this case, and slightly misleading.

The fresco was always understood to represent philosophy, but it had no title in the modern sense.

The School of Athens at least suggests the gravitas of the vast scene, which is pictorially expressed through the barrel-vaulted architecture,

which may be based upon Bramante's designs for the new St. Peter's.

It's even been suggested, it's even likely, that the dominant architectural setting here was designed by Bramante for Raphael,

or that they worked together on it. The architectural space, the pictorial space here, may have been designed before Raphael had grouped his figures within it.

It presents a complementary group of philosophers from classical antiquity, engaged in conversation and pedagogy, if you will,

in the center, framed by a succession of barrel-vaults, which come down one after the other until they focus in.

It's deep space, but they're also diminuendo, as it were, and focus on two figures.

They focus on Plato and Aristotle. Plato is on the left, he's bearded, he points toward heaven,

which suggests the source of his philosophical ideas.

He is a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, almost certainly.

Aristotle, beside him, points to the earth, the source of his empirical observations.

Other ancient figures here include Sophocles, in a group to the left, he's here,

and he's enumerating on his fingers various thoughts that he has to a group of disciples standing here.

Pythagoras is here, he's crouching at the lower left here, with a white cloak around his knees.

He's inscribing, on a tablet, his system of proportions.

You know, the square of the hypotenuse of the right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two adjacent sides.

Thank you, Danny Kaye.

The figure behind him, by the way, right here, recalls Leonardo's unfinished adoration.

Those creeping figures that were with the Magi, he's like a memory of that.

The figure standing to the right of Pythagoras, here, is exactly in the pose that Raphael then reused for his Galatea.

Do you see it?

He's got a red lower cloak, gold top, and it's exactly the twisting pose.

Well, exactly, it's too strong, but very, very nearly the same pose.

Legs, knees, everything as used for Galatea.

On the right side, we have Ptolemy.

You see the globe here being held in his right hand.

This is Ptolemy, the ancient geographer and astronomer, and he holds a celestial globe.

Just to the right of him, peeking through right, here is Raphael himself, in a self-portrait, with a black hat and looking at us.

The wonderful group to the left of Ptolemy, this group here, includes and centers on, in a way, Euclid, this man who bends over to demonstrate his geometric theorem.

Euclid is a portrait of the architect Bramante.

And the other figures are equally wonderful here in the way that they are wrapped in his demonstration.

In the center, the old man sprawling on the steps is Diogenes, who preached the simple life and lived in a tub to prove it.

And he also spent a lot of time searching the streets for an honest man to no avail, so he looks properly dejected, lying here alone in the middle of the steps.

And finally, the large, morose figure at the front left center is interpreted as being Heraclitus, the photographer, the philosopher, who believed that change is the only reality.

He is the one who said you cannot step twice into the same river.

He stands out in this fresco in his apartness.

And it is demonstrable that this fresco was repainted in that area to include this figure, and he is a portrait of Michelangelo.

And he reminds us of the prophets that Michelangelo had been painting on the Sistine ceiling.

Raphael somehow managed to get access to the Sistine Chapel and was inspired by them and puts his rival, Michelangelo, looking apart alone and a little gloomy, as he often was here in the left center of the foreground.

In the next department, the Stanza de Leodoro, the Room of Heliodorus, Raphael's style undergoes a striking, startling development.

The scene I'm showing you is the expulsion of Heliodorus. The room takes its name from this subject. It's the most action-filled painting in the room.

The expulsion of Heliodorus was probably painted 1511-12. He's moved from the Stanza de la Segnatura to this new room.

The story is told in the second book of Maccabees, a history of the Jews during the Selicid dynasty.

And Heliodorus had been sent to demand that the temple in Jerusalem surrender its treasure to the king.

As he leaves with the treasure, he is beset by an angel on horseback, here on the right-hand side, accompanied by two other angels who bear scourges, whips in their hand,

who have answered the prayer of the priest Annias in the center, in the depth of this painting, kneeling at the altar.

And he is driven to his knees, to the ground.

This kind of fallen figure reminds us of this kind of figure, the famous Dying Gaul.

Now, it's in reverse, and this particular one, the famous Dying Gaul, hadn't been excavated at the time of that fresco, but others had.

So I think it is based on, or perhaps an amalgam from parts of several ancient sculptors showing a fallen figure.

Back to the expulsion of Heliodorus.

The Pope makes an unexpected appearance in this story.

He comes in, born on a litter, over here on the left-hand side.

Raphael's included himself here somewhere as well, on the other side, somewhere peeking through at us.

But in any event, he's not expected here, but he is carried into this Old Testament story, Old Testament apocryphal story.

He's carried in on a litter from the left side to view the defeat of Heliodorus on the other side.

And this has generally been interpreted as symbolic of Julius's defense of his papacy against the challenge of a group of cardinals who were aligned with the King of France.

This is the kind of political thing that makes its way into these works of art.

By the way, I want you to look at the figure on the column up here.

The man, or young man, who's standing up on the high base of a column and crawling around it, as it were, reaching around it, moving around it toward the depth.

It's an invention that would be copied very often in the history of art.

It's amazing how you can trace certain motifs.

This is a new motif that you will find frequently subsequently.

All of the calm, I want you to look at this, and with your mind set back on that magisterial school of Athens with its measured space,

all of the calm that had characterized the frescoes in the Stanza della Signatura has been blown away by a spatial construction that exaggerates the recession of the space.

There's a rush into the central space that's enhanced by the abrupt alternation of light and dark shadow as you go back.

There are two distinct axes in the painting.

The praying priest, our eye goes back to him, and then, of course, the collapse of Heliodorus on the right, so we're pulled over to the right-hand side.

They're in conflict. These two axes are in conflict, and they pull our eye back and forth.

There's no calm here.

And this is exactly what happened, this lack of calm, this new unease, in that portrait that we looked at in the last lecture of Bindo Alteviti,

looking over his shoulder quite unsurely.

In the same way, the expulsion of Heliodorus marks a momentous shift from the serene balance of the High Renaissance

to the disruptive, emotionally charged asymmetries of a style that will come to be called Mannerism,

and that will dominate much of the rest of the 16th century.

A move from the calm of the High Renaissance to the unease of Mannerism,

it is notable and startling that this stylistic sea change arises within the Vatican,

which fostered the most famous works of the High Renaissance,

and it arose within the work of Raphael, not just his students, but of Raphael himself,

who was the epitome, to that point, of the High Renaissance.

Thank you very much for your attention.