_Raphael_ (Umbrian: 1483-1520). _See 1171._
This picture--known as the "Garvagh Madonna," from its former owner,
Lord Garvagh, or the "Aldobrandini Madonna," from having originally
belonged to the Aldobrandini apartments of the Borghese Palace at
Rome--belongs to Raphael's third or Roman period, and a comparison
with the "Ansidei" shows the changes in feeling between the painter's
earlier and later manners. The devotional character of the Umbrian
School is less marked. In the "Ansidei Madonna" the divinity of the
Virgin is insisted on; and above her throne is the inscription "Hail,
Mother of Christ." But here the divinity is only dimly indicated by a
halo. And as the Madonna is here a merely human mother, so is the child
a purely human child. The saints in contemplation of the "Ansidei" are
replaced by a little St. John, and the two children play with a pink.
The expressions of the children, as indeed the whole picture, are full
of sweetness and beauty.[176] Very beautiful too is the pyramidal
composition of the group. Of the ultimate significance of the change
marked by Raphael's third manner, Ruskin says that it--
"Was all the more fatal because at first veiled by an
appearance of greater dignity and sincerity than were
possessed by the older art. One of the earliest results of
the new knowledge was the putting away the greater part of
the _unlikelihoods_ and fineries of the ancient pictures, and
an apparently closer following of nature and probability.
The appearances of nature were more closely followed in
everything; and the crowned Queen-Virgin of Perugino sank
into a simple Italian mother in Raphael's 'Madonna of the
Chair.' ... But the glittering childishness of the old art
was rejected, not because it was false, but because it was
easy; and, still more, because the painter had no longer any
religious passion to express. He could think of the Madonna
now very calmly, with no desire to pour out the treasures of
earth at her feet, or cover her brows with the golden shafts of
heaven. He could think of her as an available subject for the
display of transparent shadows, skilful tints, and scientific
foreshortenings,--as a fair woman, forming, if well painted, a
pleasant piece of furniture for the corner of a boudoir, and
best imagined by combination of the beauties of the prettiest
contadinas"[177] (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iv.
§§ 12, 13).
It should, however, be remembered that the "Madonna di San Sisto,"
perhaps the most spiritual of all Raphael's conceptions, was the latest
of the series.