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Here he remained more than eight years, and about the time of leaving painted the very celebrated picture called "Lo Sposalizio," or the Marriage of the Virgin, now in the Brera at Milan. This picture is famous the world over, and is very important in the life of the painter, because it shows the highest point he reached under Perugino, or during what is called his first manner in painting.
They are all the designs of Perugino, but worked out with the painstaking care always shown by very young artists; yet there is a subtle, spiritual style that marks, unmistakably, Raphael's Perugino period. The "Sposalizio," done in Fifteen Hundred Four, now in the Brera at Milan, is the first really important work of Raphael.
It was wholly impossible to get the arch filled with figures, unless they stood on each other's heads; so Giotto ekes it out with a piece of fine architecture. Raphael, in the Sposalizio, does the same, for pleasure. Then he puts two dainty little white figures, bending, on each flank, to stop up his corners. But he puts the taller inside on the right, and outside on the left.
The painters of the fourteenth century, in translating these glories into a definite shape, had to deal with imperfect knowledge and imperfect means; they failed in the power to realize either their own or the poet's conception; and yet thanks to the divine poet! that early conception of some of the most beautiful of the Madonna subjects for instance, the Coronation and the Sposalizio has never, as a religious and poetical conception, been surpassed by later artists, in spite of all the appliances of colour, and mastery of light and shade, and marvellous efficiency of hand since attained.
The most beautiful representation I have ever seen is a fresco, by Luini, in the church of San Maurizio, at Milan. It belongs to a convent of nuns; and I imagine, from its introduction there, that it had a mystic signification, and referred to a divine Sposalizio. In this sense, the treatment is perfect. There are just the number of figures necessary to tell the story, and no more.
The next chapel to the Birth of the Virgin is that of the Sposalizio. There is no figure here which suggests Tabachetti, but still there are some very good ones. The best have no taint of barocco; the man who did them, whoever he may have been, had evidently a good deal of life and go, was taking reasonable pains, and did not know too much. Where this is the case no work can fail to please.
Here, as in the Chapel of S. Catherine at Milan, we feel that Luini was the greatest colourist among frescanti. In the 'Sposalizio' the female heads are singularly noble and idyllically graceful. Some of the young men too have Luini's special grace and abundance of golden hair. In the 'Disputa' the gravity and dignity of old men are above all things striking.
The eighth chapel is that of the Sposalizio, is certainly not by Aureggio, and I should say was mainly by the same sculptor who did the Presentation in the Temple. On going inside I found the figures had come from more than one source; some of them are constructed so absolutely on Valsesian principles, as regards technique, that it may be assumed they came from Varallo.
But the sposalizio struck me as tame and cheerless, the mass as irreverent and vulgarly conducted. At the same time there is something too impressive in the mass for any perfunctory performance to divest its symbolism of sublimity. A Protestant Communion Service lends itself more easily to degradation by unworthiness in the minister.
But the high-priest, who had received a revelation from an angel concerning the destiny of Mary, informed her thereof, and she with all humility submitted herself to the divine will. This scene between Mary and the high-priest has been painted by Luini, and it is the only example with which I am acquainted. Ital. Il Sposalizio. Fr. Le Mariage de la Vierge. Ger. Die Trauung Mariä. Jan. 23.
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