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Updated: May 5, 2025
In execution, as in design, this is probably the most perfect picture in the world. It is painted throughout by Raphael's own hand; and as no sketch or study of any part of it was ever known to exist, and as the execution must have been, from the thinness and delicacy of the colours, wonderfully rapid, it is supposed that he painted it at once on the canvas a creation rather than a picture.
As much as to say, he works his religion up into art, and therefore we grant him absolution for failure to attend mass: he paints and you pray it is really all the same thing. Good work and religion are one. The busy and captious critics went away, but came back next day with the startling information that Raphael's pictures were more Pagan than Christian.
I have given the servant one st., and paid one st. for brick-colour. October 1. On Monday after Michaelmas, 1520, I gave Thomas of Bologna a whole set of prints to send for me to Rome to another painter who should send me Raphael's work in return. I dined once with my wife. I paid three st. for the little tracts. The Bolognese has made my portrait; he means to take it with him to Rome.
Though driven to paint pot-boilers for the support of his family, he never ceased to preach the gospel of high art; he was among the first to recognise and acclaim the transcendent merits of the Elgin Marbles; he rejoiced with a personal joy in the purchase of the Angerstein collection as the nucleus of a National Gallery; he scorned the ignoble fears of some of his colleagues lest the newly-started winter exhibitions of old masters should injure their professional prospects; he used his interest at Court to have Raphael's cartoons brought up to London for the benefit of students and public; he advocated the establishment of local schools of design, and, through his lectures and writings, helped to raise and educate the taste of his country.
Raphael's face was found boldly executed on the underside of the moulding board, and Bacchus on the head of a beer barrel. A chanting cherub adorned the cover of the sugar bucket, and attempts to portray Romeo and Juliet supplied kindling for some time. From fire to oil was a natural transition for burned fingers, and Amy fell to painting with undiminished ardor.
Doubts having been raised as to the precise spot, a search was made in the Pantheon in 1833, and Raphael's bones were found; the situation agreeing exactly with Vasari's description of the place of interment. On the 18th of October, in the same year, the relics were reinterred in the same spot with great solemnities.
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.
What picture more sweetly poetical than Raphael's head of himself in the Uffizi, or Giotto's Dante in the Bargello? What ideal statue surpasses in poetical power Michel Angelo's De' Medici in the San Lorenzo Chapel? What ideal head is more beautiful than the Townley Clytie of the British Museum, or the Young Augustus of the Vatican? What grander than Da Vinci's portrait of himself?
It was scarcely dawn when I was roused by a little arm round my neck, and waked to think I had one of Raphael's cherubs by my side. Fingers of waxen softness were ruthlessly at work upon my eyes, and the little form that met my touch felt lithe and elastic, like a kitten's limbs.
He was full of admiration for the cathedral, the equestrian statue of Cosmo de Medici, the "David" of Michel Angelo, the Loggia de Lanzi, Raphael's portrait of Julius II., the "Fates" of Michel Angelo, and many others; yet he confesses that the Dutch, French, and English paintings gave him a more simple, natural pleasure, probably because their subjects came closer to his own experience.
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