RAPHAEL

Raphael is still, as in his lifetime, probably the most famous and popular painter in history. His art of quiet grandeur, at once human and sublime is amply represented in the twenty-three full-colour plates and fourteen two-colour plates of this site.

Here we see the complete range of his art: monumental altarpieces and tender Madonnas; brilliant portraits of Popes, cardinals, beauties; the noble classical and religious frescoes in the Vatican apartments Marco Valsecchi, The object of this series is to introduce the great artists of the world to the general reader at a price and in a format suitable to his pocket. The greatest pains have been taken to attain faithful reproduction of the true colour values of the paintings, but no mechanical process exists today which can do justice to the full beauty of the original works of art. The publishers will feel rewarded if readers are persuaded to see the masterpieces themselves in the collections and galleries to which they are directed in the text.

One might say that Raphael summarized the ideals and different artistic trends of the Italian Renaissance: the charm of Umbrian mysticism and Florentine importance of forms and space; the delicate and enigmatic shadings of Leonardo and the heroic and monumental conceptions of Michelangelo; the exaltation of colors of Giorgione and Titian, and the interplay of luminous tones, as a new form of poetic expression, through which Caravaggio - by means of sudden flashes of light - revealed a new concept in the representation of reality. To say this is to recognize that Raphael's incredibly short activity as a painter - it lasted less than twenty years - was a miraculous adventure in view of the intelligence and poetry of his work. Still, this would not fully explain the individual character of Raphael's work within the superb panorama of the Italian Renaissance. Had Raphael simply incorporated and absorbed the artistic traits of the contemporaries with whom he came in contact, his work would be only an early manifestation of that intellectual eclecticism which characterized the art of the Caracci and which reached its height some fifty years after Raphael's death in 1520.

But while Raphael responded to diverse influences, he assimilated these varied elements and gave them an intellectual clarity and a maturity of expression often superior to those of his masters, achieving with perfect elaboration a marvelous balance of intellectual vision, ideal beauty, and perfection of composition. His greatest personal talent lay in his ability to synthesize with remarkable clarity the qualities of his age. In effect, he succeeded in giving visual expression to the profound and meditative Neoplatonic concepts of the Renaissance, according to which man is a reflection of a superior being, the image of God.

Himself, all perfection, intelligence, and beauty. And so Raphael achieves a harmony of man with other creatures end with nature-the kingdom of his existence - and with his Maker, first love and moving spirit of all things according to Dantesque philosophy. Thus the dignity and beauty of the human figure and man's relationships with his surroundings are represented in calm, harmonious, and intimate, but not passive, contemplation. This achievement is not simply the result of an amazing stylistic technique and mastery of composition, but the graceful projection in pictorial images of Raphael's inner most beliefs, his vision of man, and of the universe in the all-embracing greatness of God.…. Read next.