Raphael came to Rome before September 1508, for on the 5th of that
month he sent a letter from the city of the popes to Francia at
Bologna, whom he had probably met at Urbino. It must have been an
intoxicating experience for the young master to find himself suddenly
surrounded by the wonders of the classic world which at that time
dominated the whole world of thought so that Christianity itself became
permeated with Paganism; and to be as suddenly raised from the modest
position, which in Florence had made him look with awe and veneration
upon Michelangelo and Lionardo, to independent responsibility, as the
compeer of the greatest of his calling. From the very first Pope Julius
II. seems to have placed the utmost confidence in the newcomer, and the
manner in which Raphael accomplished the first task set to him by his
mighty patron not only justified this confidence but apparently made
the Pope dissatisfied with much of the decorative work that had been
executed in the Vatican rooms before the advent of the Urbinate.
Julius II.'s hatred of his predecessor, Alexander VI., had made it
distasteful for him to live in the apartments that had been occupied by
the Borgia Pope, so that he decided, in 1507, to move into the upper
rooms of the Vatican, which, under the pontificate of Nicholas V., had
been decorated by Pier dei Franceschi and Bramantino. These frescoes,
however, did not find favour with the new Pope, who enlisted the
services of Perugino, Peruzzi, Sodoma, Signorelli, and Pinturicchio for
the redecoration of the _Stanze_, and finally entrusted Raphael with
the painting of four medallions in Sodoma's ceiling in the first room,
the Camera della Signatura. There has been some divergence of opinion
as to the use of this room, but the subjects of the decorative scheme
clearly point towards its being originally intended for a library. The
allegorical figures of Theology, Philosophy, Jurisprudence, and Poetry
with which Raphael filled the four medallions of the vaulted ceiling,
were often used for the decoration of libraries during the late
Renaissance; and the frequent occurrence of books in all the
compositions lends further probability to this theory.
So delighted was Julius II. with the manner in which Raphael had
acquitted himself of his first commission, that he, forthwith, charged
him with the decoration of the entire suite of four rooms, and
ruthlessly decreed the destruction of all the fresco-work previously
done by other hands. But Raphael, in his hour of victory, gave proof of
that generous and amiable disposition which endeared him to all with
whom he came in contact. He prevailed upon his impetuous employer to
save some of the work of Baldassare Peruzzi and of Perugino, and
Sodoma's ceiling decoration in the Camera della Signatura. A series of
heads by Bramantino, "so beautiful and so perfectly executed, that the
power of speech alone was required to give them life," had to go, but
before their destruction Raphael had them copied by one of his
assistants. After his death these copies were presented by Giulio
Romano to Paolo Giovio, and it is more than probable that they are
identical with the "Bramantino" portraits from the Willett collection,
now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and at South Kensington. Sir
Caspar Pardon Clarke, the director of the former institution, at least
favours this theory which I first advanced in the _New York Herald_ in
1905.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.--POPE JULIUS II.
(In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence)
Raphael's greatness as a portrait painter may be judged from his
painting of his first papal patron, the warlike Giuliano della Rovere,
who as Pope adopted the name of Julius II. This portrait has more than
the perfection of form, colour, and execution that is ever associated
with Raphael's name. It has depth of character, dignity, and serious
concentration of thought, and is worthy of being placed beside
Velazquez's immortal portrait of Pope Innocent X. The picture is at the
Uffizi Gallery, but replicas are to be found at the Palazzo Pitti and
at the National Gallery.]
But to return to Raphael's work in the Camera della Signatura, the
thought and knowledge and learning displayed in the whole scheme either
prove that the young master rapidly fell into line with the
intellectual movement of his day, or that he wisely sought the advice
of those who stood at the head of this movement. Indeed, we know of a
letter in which he asks the poet Ariosto to advise him about certain
details. Moreover, the Pope himself, no doubt, suggested his own ideas
to his favourite painter; whilst the cultured Cardinal Bibbiena, Count
Baldassare Castiglione, and the famous humanist Pietro Bembo, his
intimate friends, were ever at his disposal, and Bramante probably
assisted him in designing the architectural setting to his groups.
Raphael himself, though extraordinarily receptive, and better able than
anybody else to clothe an idea in the most perfect pictorial forms, was
not a man of learning. With Dante's and Petrarch's poetry he must have
been made familiar in his father's house. He had probably dipped into
the writings of Marsilio Ficino, and also acquired a knowledge of the
rudiments of classic lore; but that he never mastered the Latin tongue,
which was then a _sine quâ non_ of all real culture and learning, is
clearly evident from the fact that in the closing years of his life,
when he held the appointment of inspector of antiquities, he had to
enlist the learned humanist Andrea Fulvio to translate for him the
Latin inscriptions on classic ruins.
In the Camera della Signatura, Raphael's entire decoration has the same
sense of orderly arrangement, the same unity of conception in the
endless variety of _motif_ and incident, as each individual fresco of
the scheme. On the pendentives, which connect the ceiling medallions
with the large frescoes on the walls, he painted the "Fall of Man" next
to "Theology," the "Judgment of Solomon" next to "Law," the "Triumph of
Apollo over Marsyas" to accompany "Poetry," and an allegorical
representation of "Astronomy" (or "Natural Science") to go with
"Philosophy." After an enormous amount of preparatory work he proceeded
to fill the large wall under "Theology" with the wonderful monumental
fresco known as the "Disputa del Sacramento," which, far from
representing a dispute, shows the confessors and saints and fathers of
the Church (and among them Dante, Savonarola, and Fra Angelico) united
in acknowledging the triumph of the Church and the miracle of the
Eucharist.
On the opposite wall, under "Philosophy," is the so-called "School of
Athens," in which, in accordance with the contradictory spirit of the
age, the philosophic systems of the ancient world are glorified in the
same manner as is Christianity in the "Disputa." In that nobly-arranged
group of philosophers, Raphael's friends and contemporaries--Bramante,
Lionardo, Castiglione, Francesco della Rovere, Federigo Gonzaga,
Sodoma, the artist himself, and many others--figure in the guise of
Euclid, Plato, Zoroaster, and other sages. Raphael's compositional
skill was not baffled by the awkward intrusion of large door-frames
into the space of the remaining two walls, on one of which, under the
Poetry medallion, he depicted "Parnassus," with the muses and poets
(Homer, Virgil, Dante, Ariosto, Boccaccio, Tebaldeo, Sappho, &c.)
grouped around Apollo, who plays a viol instead of the customary lyre.
Above the door on the last wall are allegorical figures of Fortitude,
Prudence, and Temperance, and at the sides "Justinian delivering the
Pandects," and "Gregory IX." (impersonated by Julius II.) promulgating
the Decretals. The entire room was finished before November 1511.
It was probably in the same year that Raphael painted the magnificent
portrait of Julius II. at the Pitti Palace, stern of feature and
careworn, as he well might have appeared at this time of political
disaster culminating in the loss of Bologna. But when Raphael set about
the decoration of the "Stanza of Heliodorus," the Pope's star was again
in the ascendant, and his policy had achieved the signal triumph of
defeating the French and driving them out of the country. The subjects
chosen for the decoration of this room are in consequence more or less
directly connected with these events, especially the fresco from which
the apartment derives its name: the "Expulsion of Heliodorus from the
Temple of Jerusalem"--an obvious allusion to the expulsion of the
French forces. The fresco is remarkable for the effective contrast of
the tumultuous dramatic movement on the right, and the stately repose
of the group on the left, around the majestically enthroned figure of
Pope Julius II.
The same potentate of the Church appears kneeling opposite the
officiating priest in the fresco of the "Mass of Bolsena," which
illustrates the miracle of drops of blood appearing from the Host
before the eyes of the priest who doubts the dogma of the
transubstantiation, an event which has led to the institution of the
Corpus Christi celebration. The fresco was probably inspired by Julius
himself, who had visited the chapel of Bolsena on his campaign against
Bologna, and perhaps made a vow on this occasion to commemorate his
visit by a votive offering. This "Mass of Bolsena" fresco is remarkable
for the almost Venetian glow of warm colour, a result, no doubt, of the
knowledge imparted to Raphael by Sebastiano del Piombo, who had come to
Rome from Venice in 1511. The wall opposite illustrates the "Liberation
of St. Peter from Prison," which is, however, not an allusion, as has
been suggested, to Leo X.'s escape from French captivity, since it was
begun under the régime of Julius II., who more probably intended it to
signify the Deliverance of the Church. On the last wall is depicted the
"Retreat of Attila before St. Leo," with Leo X., who had succeeded
Julius II. in 1513, impersonating his namesake, but there is little of
Raphael's handiwork in this fresco, the execution of which is almost
entirely due to his assistants. The decoration of this stanza was
completed in 1514, a year which brought further honours and duties to
Raphael who was then appointed to succeed Bramante as architect of St.
Peter's.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.--PUTTO WITH GARLAND
(In the Academy of St. Luca, Rome)
The fresco of a _putto_, now at the Academy of St. Luca in Rome, is the
only fragment that is left to the world of all the decorative work
executed by Raphael for the corridor leading from the famous _Stanze_
of the Vatican to the Belvedere. It probably belonged to a shield
bearing the papal arms, and is a graceful and characteristic example of
the master's treatment of the form of children which he loved to
introduce into his compositions.]
Henceforth Raphael is to be considered rather as the head of a little
army of painters and craftsmen, whom he supplied with ideas and designs
to be executed under his directions, than as a master who is to be held
responsible for the working out of every detail in the works which were
turned out from his bottega with his sanction, and under his name. Even
in the early years of his Roman period, comparatively few of the
altar-pieces and easel pictures commissioned from him were entirely the
work of his brush. In the ever popular "Madonna della Sedia," at the
Pitti Palace, we have pure Raphael, and also in the masterpiece known
as the "Madonna di Foligno," which was painted for the Pope's
Chamberlain Sigismondi dei Conti, for his family chapel in the church
of Ara Coeli in 1512, in commemoration of this dignitary's escape from
a bursting fireball, as is indicated by the meteor in the landscape
background. This picture was subsequently removed to Sigismondo's
birthplace Foligno, whence it was carried off by the French in 1797,
but had to be eventually restored, and is now among the treasures of
the Vatican. The sadly deteriorated "Madonna of the Tower," at the
National Gallery, and the "Madonna di Casa d'Alba," at the Hermitage,
are probably of the master's own execution; but Giulio Romano and other
pupils must be held responsible for the "Vierge au Diadème," the
"Madonna del divino Amore," the "Garvagh Madonna," the "Madonna of the
Fish," the "Madonna of the Candelabra," and several other well-known
pictures for which Raphael had supplied the designs.