Comments on Chapter 7

I had difficulty grasping what Manniera in Art truly is. I found bits and pieces that describe the style in painting. For example “Forms are illumined by cool light, transmitted through air so thin it seems unbreathable.” The atmosphere is both transparent and clear. The figures and their behavior are aetheticized. Their form is deliberate and intentional, but graceful and civilized (pg 286). I was also intrigued by the commentary of plasticity and sculptural aspects of the painting. Raphael began to incorporate more sculpture-like figures into his later paintings, similar to those of Michelangelo. The mannerists would use this sculpturesque style as a guide to stylization in their paintings (pg 287).

Michelangelo in Disguise

Some of you may have already known this, but it came as a surprise to me as I was reading Renaissance Rivals. Raphael painted the portrait of Michelangelo into the School of Athens. "He is Michelangelo in Michelangelesque guise, represented as a melancholy genius, an apt description of the man employing an imagery familiar to contemporaries, intellectually and psychologically isolated though surrounded by a society of great men" (Goffen pg122). It is considered that Raphael even referenced the engraving Melencholio by Albrecht Durer and Michelangelo's prophet Jeremiah.

Raphael's School of Athens portrait of Michelangelo

 Albrecht Durer Melencholia

The portrait can be seen as acknowledgement of Michelangelo's greatness, or his failure to complete projects such as the Battle of Cascina and the Saint Matthew

Ideas up for Interpretation - Steinberg on the Last Judgment

It fascinates me all the thought that is put into composing the Last Judgment. In such a massive and extraordinary painting, it makes sense that diagonals and line work need to be considered if Christ is to be the focus without distraction – “Two diagonals converging in Christ… Without this symmetrical order, it would have been impossible to give emphasis to the chief figure” (Steinberg pg1). It is difficult to decide whether Christ is sitting, or rising, standing, or springing into action. But all interpretations of his gestures carry equal value and weight, in my opinion.

However, at times (after reading further) I was a bit skeptical of some of the ideas mentioned towards the creation of the Last Judgment. Did Michelangelo really consider all those things before and while painting the frescoes? At least Steinberg continues to question Michelangelo’s intentions and leaves some of the ideas for interpretation. For example in #15, Steinberg says, “Nor can one resist the impression that Christ’s hands together sustain the motion of the entire system. Like those of a conductor,  raising a crescendo on his right side while muting the other, the lifted hand causing that universal updraft by which the resurrected are drawn” (pg 12). I can see the visual, and I am glad the word impression was used, but Michelangelo probably did not intend for that visual. Too him, it may have just been a dynamic pose. Again, in #8, discussing the ‘fictional demons for dramatic effect’ in hell and poetic sources, “one cannot be certain about his intention but it seems to me that he [Michelangelo] introduced his Underworld between quotation marks, as it were” (pg 6). In general, most of the interpretations and meanings/ideas are skeptical, and I finish feeling unconvinced.

I don’t understand what Steinberg means when he uses the word “sink” to describe the position of the figures. Perhaps someone can comment and explain. Or do I just need to take it literally?

Titian's Venus of Urbino - Goffen

                Titian is among the first artists to be considered an international artist during his time. His work extended throughout Europe and influential works contributed to his success. The Venus of Urbino is in particular, significant. Titian painted many nude women, a contrast to the women (mostly clothed Madonna’s) and nude men that his contemporaries painted.  The Venus has often been considered pornographic and misogynistic. I believe it is neither.

She is placed into a bedroom, a setting not typical used during this time, propped up by pillows on a bed. The pose is striking because of her stare and revealed breasts. Her empowering stare beholds the viewer’s eye, perhaps in a sensual sense (pg 9; 13). However, her stare and reclining and exposed pose does not impose a sense of misogyny or pornography. It is a celebration of the female form. Michelangelo explored the male form countless because of his attachment to its beauty. His male forms appear throughout his paintings as bystanders but none of which are sexual or explicit.  Raphael and Leonardo expressed the feminine form through their portraits and the Madonna. I believe Titian was searching for his niche – to unveil the beauty of the female form and reveal it in a non-religious context.

Prostitution was practiced during this time and it is considered the model is a prostitute, but if not, in what ways does this painting deliver a sexual nature? Goffen* does not explore this question much besides referring to Titian’s painted subjects to have independence and personality (pg11) and injected eroticism. I suppose the mystery remains as it can only solved by the eye of the beholder. It is difficult to understand Titian’s true intentions behind this remarkable painting.

*I do like Goffen very much as an author and she suggests information without a bias.

Raphael copies Leonardo and Michelangelo

INTERESTING FACT:

“Raphael’s portrait of the pope  was so alive and true that it made one afraid to see it as though  it were in fact the living man” (Goffen 194). Raphael painted the portrait of Pope Julius II during the pope’s final days of life. It was so life-like and captured the self-awareness of ending life. To the viewers it had become something tragic as they realize the ‘frailty of life and human enterprise’.

Raphael’s Madonna and Child with Saints references much of Leonardo’s geometry  in composition as pyramidal and “unified by glance and gesture.” – Specifically in Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi. Raphael also studied Michelangelo mostly in sketches. In Florence, he made three sketches of Michelangelo’s David as well as the Taddei Tondo, the Cascina Cartoon and the unfinished Saint Matthew. The drawings do not copy the artwork exactly but rather present “a variation on Michelangelo’s invention” (Goffen 196). The Taddei Tondo can specifically be referenced in Raphael’s Madonna paintings such as the Bridgewater Madonna.

An excerpt for Renaissance Rivals by Rona Goffen

“When Raphael took from Leonardo, he took wholesale, adopting Leonardo’s compositional formulas and his conception of the Mother and Child. Raphael so thoroughly integrated Leonardo’s aesthetics that imitation became absorption. When Raphael appropriated ideas from Michelangelo, however, his borrowings became more selective: It was not the whole but particular parts that Raphael incorporated into his compositions. From Leonardo, he had taken whole texts; from Michelangelo, he took phrases” (Goffen 205).

An Introduction to Raphael

Raphael is set apart from his rivals. He competes with “graceful admiration for his rivals" and does not carry anxiety from their influence. Perhaps this is due to the very different lifestyle Raphael lived compared to Michelangelo and Leonardo. Raphael grew up in a loving household that nurtured his artistic interests. His father Giovanni Santi was a painter and was Raphael’s first instructor. Raphael excelled very quickly and learned about Michelangelo and Perugino through his father’s book, Disputation. Rivalry between Raphael and Michelangelo was avoidable; however, it was Michelangelo who carried the resentment for jealousy towards Raphael’s upbringing. “The disparity between them was perhaps even greater than that between Michelangelo and Leonardo” (Goffen 173).

Raphael’s rivalry became more evident between him and Perugino by “imitating Perugino so closely” (Goffen 173). Ironically, Raphael and Perugino were both given the Sposalizio commission (Betrothal of the Virgin). Raphael was not meant to make a copy of Perugino’s work, but asked by their patrons to complete the same subject to fit alongside Perugino’s, finished with a signature. Raphael’s signatures are very rare and yet more are those with dates. “Only eight works are both signed and dated, beginning with the Sposalizio in 1504. The majority of these signatures are inconspicuously placed somewhere within the painting. “The Sposalizio signature similarly signifies professional self-awareness and the recognition – shared by contemporaries – that the work signaled a new chapter in his life, a seminal work for Raphael” (Goffen 178).

Raphael's Sposalizio

Raphael's signature in Fornarina