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Updated: June 29, 2025
I have devoted my talents to her; it seemed to me that by loving and perpetually contemplating her image, I might at last become worthy of painting it. I was conscious of a grand future, if only she had understood me; I often thought of Raphael and his own Fornarina. There is a throne vacant in poetry; I had dreamed of this throne in order to lay it at Clemence's feet.
I wish, however, it were possible for some spectator, of deep sensibility, to see the picture without knowing anything of its subject or history; for, no doubt, we bring all our knowledge of the Cenci tragedy to the interpretation of it. Close beside Beatrice Cenci hangs the Fornarina. . . .
The one by the first-mentioned artist is a Fornarina, and bears the autograph of the painter on the armlet. But the picture that attracts the most attention here is one of world-wide reputation, copies, engravings and photographs of which are everywhere to be met with Guido's Beatrice Cenci. A great divergence of opinion, as is well known, exists in regard to the portrait.
She soon designed original subjects and introduced persons of her own imagination, which early marked her as powerful in her fancy and original in her manner of rendering her ideas. A picture of "Raphael and the Fornarina," which she executed at the age of fifteen, was so satisfactory as to determine her fate, and she was allowed to study art.
The other notable pictures are Raphael's Fornarina, No. 245, which is far more Venetian than the "Madonna della Sedia," and has been given to Sebastian del Piombo; and the Venetian group on the right of the door, which is not only interesting for its own charm but as being a foretaste of the superb and glorious Giorgione in the Sala di Marte, which we now enter.
I have devoted my talents to her; it seemed to me that by loving and perpetually contemplating her image, I might at last become worthy of painting it. I was conscious of a grand future, if only she had understood me; I often thought of Raphael and his own Fornarina. There is a throne vacant in poetry; I had dreamed of this throne in order to lay it at Clemence's feet.
The half-length Daughter of Herodias bequeathed to the National Gallery by George Salting is dated 1510, and in 1512 he painted the famous Fornarina in the Uffizi, which until the middle of the last century was supposed to be a chef d'oeuvre of Raphael. To this period also belongs the S. John in the Desert, at the Louvre.
His conclusion was that "there is something forced, if not feigned, in our taste for pictures of the old Italian school." Of the profane subjects, he instances the Fornarina, "with a deep bright glow on her face, naked below the waist, and well pleased to be so, for the sake of your admiration ready for any extent of nudity, for love or money the brazen trollop that she is!
Near it hangs the Fornarina, which he seems to have painted in as deep a love as he entertained for the original. The face is modest and beautiful, and filled with an expression of ardent and tender attachment. I never tire looking upon either of these two. Let me not forget, while we are in this peerless hall, to point out Guercino's Samian Sybil. It is a glorious work.
Raphael continually visited the Trastevere, a popular quarter where the most beautiful women in Rome were to be found, in order to seek the type of a Madonna. It was here he became acquainted with the Fornarina and his models. But when he painted the Madonna he reproduced "the image of his soul."
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