Patrick Bade
The High Renaissance: Raphael

Patrick Bade The High Renaissance: Raphael

- [Judy] Well, welcome back, Patrick, and hello. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon to everybody that’s joining us today. Patrick, over to you, whenever you’re ready.

• Thank you, Judy. Well, if one had to choose one work of art to embody all the qualities and values that one associates with the High Renaissance, it would probably have to be this. This is a fresco by Raphael called “The School of Athens”. It’s in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, in Rome. And for 300 years after the death of Raphael in 1520, this was held up as perhaps the most perfect work of art ever created. Every young artist was encouraged to study it and learn from it. It was one of the principle goals of the grand tour of going to Italy to learn about the culture of the Renaissance. And this, this is the “Madonna della Sedia”, the “Madonna of the Chair”. And I reckon that this is the most frequently copied painting in the history of Western art. When I used to work at Christie’s South Ken, I worked in the school next door to the auction house. And every day I walked through the auction house to the canteen. And there would always be one or more of these in any sale of old masters. Sometimes you’d walk past a whole wall of rows of copies of the “Madonna della Sedia”. And so the originals, particularly the Madonnas, they were tremendous prestige objects, right? Every king, every emperor, every prince, every aristocrat wanted to have a Raphael. And Augustus III of Saxony, the Elector of Saxony in the 18th century, he launched a major political diplomatic campaign to get this painting, “The Sistine Madonna”, out of the Vatican, and it’s now, of course, known also as the “Dresden Madonna”, and it’s in the Picture Gallery in Dresden. Now, Raphael is the youngest of these three giant artists.

He’s born in 1483, so he’s eight years younger than Michelangelo, and he’s 31 years younger than Leonardo. Now, without wishing to get back into the nature virtue, virtue versus nurture arguments, I would say that it’s not enough to be born with genius. You have to be born at the right time and into the right circumstances. And everything was right for Raphael. It was 1483, it was a great time to be born, as the High Renaissance was just about to blossom. He was born in the small principality of Urbino, and you’ve heard about that from me, you’ve heard about it from Trudy. It was ruled by the man you see on right-hand side, Federico da Montefeltro, who was considered to be one of the most enlightened princes of Renaissance. And he created a highly cultured court in his castle in Urbino. He employed Baldassare Castiglione. He wrote “The Courtier”, which really codified what was considered gentlemanly and correct behaviour right up to the 20th century. He also had the advantage of being born the son of an artist. So this is a painting on the left by his father, whose name was Giovanni Santi. Yes, I was making the point that he was a son of an artist and he learned his trade, so to speak, with his mother’s milk, or his father’s whatever. So we know that he worked in this, what the normal thing was, of course, to be, and we’ve seen this already with Michelangelo and Leonardo, that a young artist will be an apprentice in the studio of an older artist.

And between 1500 and 1504, he was in the studio of an artist called Perugino. This is a painting by Perugino, a very typical one. In 1500, he must have seemed quite an advanced artist. He’s moving on, in some ways, from the typical style of the Quattrocento. You can see here this is, it’s softer, it’s not quite so hard-edged and linear as most artists of the Quattrocento, and somewhat simpler and less fussy composition. Now, in those four years, Raphael is so close to Perugino, that in fact, there are a number of paintings that have gone backwards and forwards. Sometimes experts have said, “Yes, it’s by Perugino,” and some people say, “No, it’s by Raphael.” So here we have a very early painting by Raphael in the National Gallery in London, the “Mond Crucifixion”. And on the left, you have the central panel of the picture I’ve just shown you by Perugino. And I think you can see, very, very similar in style. The way the figures are placed in front of the landscape; the landscapes are kind of backdrop to the figures. And also the division of the composition into upper and lower areas. And also if we look at the facial types, you can see that at this stage, Raphael has completely adopted the ideal beauty and facial type of Perugino. And these again, are two more or less contemporary paintings. Before I tell you, do you want to have a go and guess which is Raphael and which is Perugino? You can see a difference. I think the Raphael, the Perugino is a little stiffer. The Raphael may be a little more fluid in the posing of the figures. So it’s same object, it’s the betrothal of the Virgin, and it’s Raphael on the left, and it’s Perugino on the right. And in the background, you have a very up-to-date Renaissance circular building.

And my guess is that both artists were familiar with the architectural designs of Bramante, who designed the little Tempietto you see in the middle. This, again, is in the National Gallery. It’s actually a tiny picture, and it may be the first surviving picture by Raphael. It’s an exquisite piece. It’s titled, in the National Gallery catalogue, “The Vision of the Knight”. But it could be one of two subjects. It could either be the choice of Hercules, or it could be the dream, as he seems to be asleep, of Scipio Africanus. They both have the same meaning, really, which is the choice that the hero has to make between pleasure and duty. You can see pleasure is a nice young woman holding up a flower, and duty is holding up a sword and a book. As I said, it’s tiny. And by an amazing coincidence, the National Gallery also possesses the cartoon for this picture. I’ve said that the cartoons are extremely, it’s extremely rare for them to survive at all, because they’re on paper. This one, I suppose, because it’s very small, it was less likely to be damaged or destroyed. But you can actually see in the image on the screen the little dots, which are where it’s been pricked. And as I said, that is so that the design could be translated to a panel. This is another early work, a fragmentary early work by Raphael. And here, fascinatingly, we have the preparatory drawing for the angel on the left. But you can see that he was, maybe, still working in the studio of Perugino at this point. This is still very early Raphael. And, but he’s just got another one of the assistants, or the pupils in the studio, to pose for the angel in his drawing. He hasn’t made any attempt to dress him as an angel.

He’s shown him dressed as an apprentice. Might be around 1500. And this is another drawing for an altarpiece where you can see the, what is presumably again an angel at the top. It is posed for by a young apprentice, as in the previous one, with a fashionable codpiece. These were very, very trendy clothing, around 1500, aiming to emphasise the masculinity of the wearer. So he moves to Florence round about 1505, 1506, and he’s there till 1508. And this is really crucial for his development, ‘cause now, suddenly he’s there with the big boys in Florence. And he can drink in all sorts of influences, and the very latest developments in Italian art. And it’s in this period in Florence that he’s commissioned to paint the very wealthy Agnolo Doni and his wife, Maddalena. Here they are. And he’s a very accomplished portraitist all the way through his career. I regret he didn’t paint more portraits. I’m going to show you some more later in this talk. And he has this wonderful ability that later fascinated Ingres, to give you a likeness.

I think these are probably very vivid and convincing likenesses. They’re very individualised faces. So I’m sure that this is what Mr. and Mrs. Doni really looked like. And he gives them, it’s a wonderful combination of realism and abstraction. You know, he makes a very satisfying pose. He makes a very satisfying, abstract composition of these very real figures. So who does he get this from? I think he gets it from Leonardo. Leonardo was in Florence at this time. We don’t know if they had contact; it’s very likely. You know, it’s quite a small town. And Leonardo was still in possession of the “Mona Lisa”, and I’m quite sure that Raphael saw it. And this is his preliminary drawing for “Maddalena Doni”, where the connection with the “Mona Lisa” is even more obvious than in the final picture. Now, in this relatively short phase in Florence between 1505 and 1508, this is when he paints most of his Madonnas, which have always been one of the most attractive and popular aspects of his work. And so I think he’s really, he’s engaged with his subject, and he’s very engaged with Leonardo’s treatment of the subject. There are differences between the two; but you can see he’s really, this whole idea of the Madonna and child, and the pyramidal composition. And again, there’s this balance between the natural and the abstract. This is something he’s learned from Leonardo.

We’ve got the Leonardo “Benois Madonna” on the right-hand side. And the earliest surviving Madonna by Raphael, “Madonna of the Pinks”, which, I suppose about 20 years ago, was discovered in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland, and there was tremendous excitement and rather nice, you know, to discover in your collection that you have a Raphael, and one in perfect state of conservation. And that was sold, I think it was $30 million. It was a lot of money anyway, that it was sold by the Duke of Northumberland to the National Gallery in London. One of the most popular of all Raphael’s Madonnas. I mean, these are so reproduced, you know, in Catholic Europe, endless postcards and little prayer cards with these Raphael Madonnas, and they’ve been greatly loved for hundreds of years. And this is “La Belle Jardinière”, and this is a painting in the Louvre. And so, on the left, we have the National Gallery, “Madonna of the Rocks”. And so this, again, this pyramidal composition with, and as I said, this combination of rigorous formality with naturalism. Raphael’s Madonnas are earthier. They’re less mysterious than the Leonardo ones. She’s very much, she’s, at the risk of sounding blasphemous, she’s the ultimate yummy mummy. So Leonardo is initially his first great influence, but very soon, he comes across Michelangelo.

Now, this is a painting of 1508 of St. Catherine of Alexandria, who came to a very sticky end, really gory martyrdom. She was broken on a wheel, but that didn’t finish her off. And she had to have her head hacked off after she’d been broken on the wheel. Now, there’s certain periods in art where the artist would really relish the gory aspects of this subject. In the Middle Ages, for instance, or in the Baroque period. But in High Renaissance, there’s this very strong sense of decorum, and beauty, and balance. And so Raphael certainly avoids the gorier aspects of the subject. He would’ve been familiar, as I said, he worked for the Doni family, with the circular painting that Michelangelo had painted for them, the “Tondo Doni”, there’s a detail on the left-hand side. And you could see he’s picking up Michelangelo’s use of contrapposto, the twist of the body. And again, it’s very harmonious, it’s very satisfying, from a purely formal point of view. And notice how the curve of the wheel on which Catherine was broken is echoed throughout the composition. You get this in her drapery and in the forms of her body. It’s like a rhythm created by these multiple curves. Leonardo too, I mean, he would have known the original of this picture, this is a copy on the right-hand side, a later and similar use of contrapposto.

And this is the “Medici Venus”. So this gesture of the hands, which is meant, this is the Venus Pudica, it’s meant to be a gesture of modesty, covering up the sexual parts of the body. So again, very Renaissance, typically Renaissance, looking back to classical antiquity. This is the Baglioni “Deposition”. And this was commissioned by the Baglioni family in 1507. A member of, the heir of the family had been assassinated, and they commissioned this important picture really as a memorial to him. And when I said that everything came easily to Raphael, I think it’s one of the things that modern people have against him. You know, we kind of liked the fact that Leonardo and Michelangelo were complicated psychologically, had all sorts of complexes, struggles, and so on. Raphael, you know, he was beautiful, he was charming. He had a sort of golden, blessed life. And as I said, everything seemed to come easily to him, which I suppose makes him less attractive as a hero to the 20th and 21st century than the other two. But he struggled with this. He initially conceived it as a lamentation. So the drawing top left is a lamentation over the dead Christ. And he, I think probably, after seeing Leonardo and Michelangelo working on their battle scenes that are full of dynamic movement, he thought, “No, I’m going to change this from a lamentation into a deposition, where the body of Christ is being carried and moved.” And it gives a greater scope for drama and movement. And here again, I’m making a comparison between “The Deposition” of Raphael at top left, and a Quattrocento Lamentation, which is much more static, and much more still, by Fra Angelico.

And the influence of Michelangelo, I think very, very clear here. Again, the detail from the “Doni Tondo”, and this twisted figure, supporting the fainting Virgin. So he was beginning to make a real name for himself around about this time, 1507, 1508, as you know, the new kid on the block, a kind of wunderkind, somebody who could possibly rival his elders, Michelangelo and Leonardo. And the architect Bramante, who was in charge of the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, he got to hear about this young artist. And as you know, Bramante and Michelangelo really hated each other, and had a very bitter rivalry. And according to Vasari anyway, who is a wonderful source of gossip and anecdote, it was Bramante who was instrumental in bringing the young Raphael to Rome, and introducing him to Pope Julius II. Julius II became Pope in 1503, following the death of Alexander VI, the Borgia Pope. And as I’ve mentioned before, of course, the Borgia became a byword for the licentiousness and the wickedness and the orgies they put on, and their not only sexual depravity, but even, according to rumour, murder.

That if you got invited to dinner with the Borgias, you didn’t necessarily expect to wake up the next morning. So Julius II thought, “No, I can’t possibly live in the apartments of the Borgia.” They do still exist. But he wanted a new set of apartments, completely redecorated. And he assembled a team of very distinguished artists, Bramantino, Lotto, Sodoma, and so on, and Raphael joined them. And his first fresco was the one, the main one you see here on the right-hand side, which is the “Disputa”. And when Julius II, when he finished it, Julius II was so impressed, that he dismissed all the other artists and he ordered their work to be destroyed, and he gave the whole project to this very young artist. Here we’ve got the frontal view here now of the “Disputa”. The “Disputa”, it’s got a very, very complex iconography. And it’s doubtful whether Raphael, still in his twenties, not particularly, not as much as an intellectual really, as either Leonardo or Michelangelo, whether he himself could possibly have conceived this complex, rather arcane programme for this picture.

So he probably had humanist scholars to help him work it all out. And it’s the glorification of the host, or you know, as Trudy likes to call it, the biscuit. The idea, it’s the transfiguration, the wafer that Catholics put on their tongue is actually the Body of Christ, and that Christ is God. So you’ve got the host in the centre of the composition. And you have got the Father at the top, Christ in the middle, Virgin on one side, John the Baptist on the other. And slightly lower down, you have what looks like a sort of committee. And they are made up of Old Testament prophets. So whether they liked it or not, the Jewish prophets from the Jewish Bible have been co-opted into discussion and glorification of the host. And on the right-hand side, we have the Church Fathers. So he follows up the “Disputa” with this great work, “The School of Athens”. As I said, the title of this room is the Stanza della Segnatura. It’s on my list that you will have got with the PowerPoint. And it’s a work of incredible power and serenity and beauty, with these very noble, sculptural, monumental figures. A vast, multi-figured composition. But there’s no sense of it being crowded, or… It’s wonderfully composed. It’s choreographed, like a ballet, in a way. And behind it, we have this awe-inspiring architectural setting.

Again, it’s unlikely that Raphael really devised this himself. And as we know, and I told you, he was a great friend of Bramante, who was in charge of the rebuilding of St. Peter’s. Now after Bramante died, of course, Michelangelo took over and then various other architects took over, and it wasn’t complete till the 17th century. And St. Peter’s in its final form is totally different from the way it was conceived by Bramante. But I think this, the architectural background to this scene probably gives us some idea of what St. Peter’s might have looked like if Bramante had lived to complete it. Here are these very noble figures in their graceful and statuesque poses. And there’s a new breadth, a new monumentality in his work. And again, the obvious answer is that he’s seen Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, which was being painted at the same time, that Michelangelo had started in 1508, completed it in 1512. Michelangelo was very paranoid and didn’t want anybody to get a glimpse of his work, and, you know, forbade anybody to see it. But Bramante, of course, was, as chief architect of the Vatican and St. Peter’s, he had the keys.

And according to Vasari, when Michelangelo was away or busy with something else, Bramante let Raphael into Sistine Chapel and he was able to study and learn from what Michelangelo had done. This is another very remarkable survival. This is a huge cartoon, a full-size cartoon by Raphael for “The School of Athens”. And it’s in the… It’s in Milan, I think it’s in the Brera in Milan, or was it the Ambrosiana? I always get those two muddled up. One of those two museums. No, it’s in the Ambrosiana in Milan. And what is interesting, I mean, more or less, as you can see, it’s pretty exactly the final composition, with one rather important figure missing. Just to the left of centre at the bottom, you can see a seated figure with his, propping up his head on his fist. And that is the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. And it seems to be a kind of tribute to Michelangelo. First of all, the pose is almost directly taken from figures of prophets in the Sistine ceiling. And secondly, it may be actually an idolised portrait of Michelangelo. And he’d already put his own portrait in, top left here, the figure with a black cap, long black hair, looking at us, catching our eyes, that is Raphael. And the bearded figure on the left-hand side of that image is probably an idealised portrait of Leonardo.

At bottom, you can see a figure of a prophet from the Sistine Chapel. And, for comparison, the figure of Heraclitus by Raphael. Now, so clearly, Raphael was expected to give Michelangelo a good run for his money. And as I’ve said before, in the Renaissance, they loved pitting one artist against another. So, in 1514, Michelangelo by this time completed the Sistine ceiling, and Raphael was commissioned by Pope Leo X, that’s Julius II’s successor, to design tapestries to hang underneath Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. So 1514 to '16, Raphael is working on the cartoons for these tapestries. This is St. Paul preaching in Ephesus. And these cartoons were then sent to Brussels, where the weavers were technically the best weavers, and they, the tapestries were made after these cartoons of Raphael, which again, amazingly survived. 'Cause they were acquired by the Duke of Mantua. And then, a later Duke of Mantua sold them to King Charles I in 1626. And there were amongst a few things in Charles I’s collection that were not sold off after his execution by Cromwell, because they were thought to be economically useful, because tapestries could still be made after them. Now, I can hardly stress the incredible importance and influence of these cartoons, and the tapestries that were made off them. I mean, it causes a revolution in northern European art, you know, which had previously, Flemish art, very, very different from this.

So it would’ve been a real shock, something really amazing, I think, for northern artists to see these cartoons, and the tapestries made after them. Now, I will come back at the end of this talk to Raphael’s enormous influence, and it was exercised partly through prints made off his work, and partly through the various sets of tapestries. Of course, the original set, it was sent to Rome and it’s still at chapel; but several more sets were made. And then of course, after the tapestries hit England, a tapestry factory was set up at Mortlake and many more sets were made, and you can find them in various English country houses. And so it’s through these that the influence of the High Renaissance was dispersed around Europe. Here, this is the giving of the keys of Christ before the ascension to heaven, and trusting the keys of the Church to Saint Peter. And so, as I said, these tapestries, these designs, rather, have this tendency towards monumentality, simplicity, gravitas is taken a big step further.

And I think he’s thinking here of Masaccio, so nearly a century earlier, the Brancacci Chapel of Masaccio, with these large, simple, sculptural, rather sculptural figures. That’s Masaccio on the left-hand side, Raphael on the right. Now, Raphael is a portraitist, and he’s such a wonderful portraitist. Here are two of the most famous. This is Baldassare Castiglione, the author of “Il Cortegiano”, “The Courtesan”, on left-hand side; it’s now in the Louvre. And this very beautiful “La donna velata”, the veiled woman, on the right-hand side. And this, of course, now this, this has a very interesting story. This, it’s his portrait of Pope Julius II towards the end of his life, not really in the best of health, suffering from syphilis and gout, as I told you last week. This portrait became, as we shall see in a minute, the prototype for all later papal portraits, the Pope seated three-quarter view, half-length in a throne. Here you can see that the throne have acorns on the back, gold acorns. And that is a reference to the family name of Pope Julius II. The family name was della Rovere, and that means of the oaks in Italian. Now, it was, there were multiple, multiple copies made of this picture. And there was, the original was lost, or seemed to be lost. And there were big arguments about whether it had survived or not. There is a very good version in the Pitti Palace in Florence.

And most art historians thought that that the most likely candidate to be Raphael’s original. This picture came into the National Gallery collection in London with the Angerstein Collection, that was the core collection, and it was very dirty and it was dismissed. It was just believed to be a copy, and it was downstairs in the reserve collection. I must have walked past it dozen of times without giving it a second look. But somebody, some expert looked at it, and underneath the dirt, they thought, “Hmm, this could be something. This is interesting.” So it was cleaned, and it came up. Look, and it’s a stunning picture. I mean, the painting of the tassels and the robes, much, much better than it looks in this image I’m showing you here. And the other really interesting thing, when they examined it in the laboratories in the National Gallery, and they X-rayed it, they found all sorts of pentimenti, that the position of the hand had changed, there were crossed keys in the background that had been painted out, and they’re now vaguely visible again through the more transparent upper layer of paint. Now, if this was a copy, you wouldn’t have pentimenti; the artist wouldn’t be changing his mind. So this was, you know, of course, wonderful for the National Gallery to find that they had all this time, in their cellars, they’d had the original of this incredibly famous painting.

So, as I said, it becomes the prototype for all later papal portraits. So top left, Raphael; next in, Titian, Pope Paul III; next down is Velazquez, Pope Innocent X, and of course, one of the famous series of Francis Bacon of screaming popes, which in a way goes all the way back to Raphael. This is the successor of Julius II, marvellous portrait. This is a Medici pope, Leo X. To the left is Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, who is to succeed him as Pope Clement VII. Just showing you, I think sometimes Raphael, in search for a kind of generalised gravitas and beauty, he is prepared to sacrifice a rich and beautiful painterly surface. But he could do it if he wanted to. This is this painting in the Pitti Palace. It’s really fabulous. You can touch the fabrics and so on. And I love the characterization of the Pope and the two cardinals. They look like they’ve stepped out of “The Godfather”. They look like mafiosi. And this is a portrait in the Louvre, which is towards the end of his life, Raphael with his hand on the shoulder of a friend who was his fencing master.

And so, he’s one of those artists, you think, “What would he have done?” Like Mozart, ‘cause he’s still in his thirties when he dies. And he died, it’s said, of exhaustion. The more polite version says that he died of overwork. And a less polite version rumoured at the time was that he died of excessive sexual activity. In this case, I think, strictly heterosexual, unlike the other two giants of the High Renaissance. So this is the final painting that he was working on, which is “The Transfiguration”, the ascension of Christ to heaven. And I’ve talked about this, I talked about it last time, because it was commissioned by the cardinal we’ve just seen, Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, and in competition with the painting of “The Raising of Lazarus”, which they wanted Michelangelo to paint, but which he declined to do, was eventually painted by Sebastiano del Piombo to the designs of Michelangelo. Now, Raphael’s influence. As I said, the tapestry cartoons were enormously influential. I haven’t, they’ve recently been restored, they’ve been re-displayed in Victoria and Albert Museum. But this was all, of course, during COVID. I haven’t been there yet to see it. I’m very curious. It’s strange that, as I said, Raphael doesn’t really excite an appeal in the way that Michelangelo and Leonardo does.

I mean, the V&A have this enormous room with the tapestry cartoons. And as I said, they’re up there with the Sistine Chapel. They are amongst most important, influential works of art in the Western tradition. But certainly, up until it’s reopening, maybe it’s still the case, you could walk into the V&A and every day, walk into that room and be virtually alone. They don’t have the pulling power. Whereas you know what the Sistine Chapel is like. You know, I mean, trying to get tickets and go and see the Sistine Chapel is a real business. So, but the other way that Raphael’s influence spread around the world was through engravings by an artist called Marcantonio Raimondi. And this is one of his engravings after a design by Raphael for the subject of the judgement of Paris. So these were, of course, relatively inexpensive and produced in quite large numbers, and they were spread around Europe and they were an enormous, enormous influence on right through to the 19th century, younger artists studied them. And they’re also a very important source for decorative arts. On the right-hand side here, you’ve got a Majolica plate, tin-glazed earthenware plate, 16th century. And so these decorative artists, some of them of a very high skill, would often base their decoration of these istoriato tin-glazed earthenware plates on the Marcantonio Raimondi prints after Raphael. But in some ways, of course, you could see the whole history of Western art from 1520 up to 1900 as being a series of reactions to Raphael, whether you react against him or whether you go back to him. And tomorrow. I’m going to be talking about the Mannerist movement, the Mannerist style. And top left, we’ve got a very characteristic Mannerist painting by Jacopo Pontormo.

And this is the story of Joseph. And it’s, what a contrast with the Raphael. The Raphael with its serenity, its harmony, its clarity; the Pontormo’s the opposite. It’s not serene, it’s not harmonious. It’s definitely not clear; it’s quite hard to read the story in this picture. It’s confused, it’s agitated, it’s neurotic, it’s the absolute opposite in many ways of Raphael. Then another artist who was accused of being anti-Raphael was Caravaggio, at the beginning of the following century, beginning of the 17th century, of abandoning Raphael’s attempt to create an ideal world, an ideal beauty, using a kind of, aiming for a kind of sordid realism. This painting of the “Death of the Virgin” that caused a scandal, because she looked so realistic that people claimed that he’d used the body of a drowned prostitute to paint the Virgin from, you know. In Raphael, they’re simple peasants, the apostles. They’re all noble, they’re all beautiful. They don’t have dirt under their fingernails and dirt on their feet, and all the sordid details that you find in Caravaggio. Rubens, ‘cause he went on to Rome, he certainly studied Raphael. And being Flemish, he would’ve been very, very familiar with the tapestries after the cartoons. And this is his version. It’s actually a modello, I think, also for a tapestry, of “The Miraculous Draught of Fishes”, where it’s in some ways, it’s a kind of homage to Raphael, and in some ways, it’s a critique of Raphael. You can see how he’s changed it by having a much more, he’s given it much more dynamic, much more dramatic quality. And instead of splaying out the figures parallel to the picture surface, you’ve got this very dynamic thrust into the space and the whole thing.

And it’s like the calm mood of “The Miraculous Draught of Fishes” in the Raphael has been really, you know, Rubens is whipping up a storm and it’s all very agitated. Now, Rembrandt was an artist who was accused by his contemporaries of contempt or ignoring Italian art, ignoring the canons of ideal beauty in classical art. He never went to Italy. But as Kenneth Clark proved in his book, “Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance”, Rembrandt was actually very engaged with Italian art and Renaissance art, very interested. And we know that the portrait of Batalzari Castiglione was auctioned in Amsterdam in 1639. And Rembrandt rushed to the auction and he made a little sketch of the picture, and he noted that it sold for a huge sum of 3,500 guilders. And he learned from it. As you can see in this self-portrait etching, where the pose and the jaunty angle of the beret are clearly indebted to Raphael. Poussin, where is very self-consciously going back to Raphael, and particularly the Raphael of the cartoons, the more austere and grave Raphael. This is Poussin’s “Judgement of Solomon”, top, and one of the Raphael cartoons, bottom right. Now, when you get to the 18th century and the Louis Quatorze and the Rococo, Madame de Pompadour, and all that frothy frivolity of the Rococo, you could think, well what would they, you know, certainly Boucher and Fragonard didn’t have any time whatsoever for Raphael. But Raphael continued to have enormous respect. Here is Sir Joshua Reynolds, first president of the Royal Academy, who was always, every year he gave his speeches at Royal Academy and he advised young artists, “Well, if you really want to progress, you have to go to Rome, you have to study High Renaissance.

In particular, you have to study Raphael.” Here is Sir Joshua Reynolds contemplating a bust of Michelangelo on the left-hand side. And on the right, a detail of Zoffany’s painting of English grand tourists, plump, pink-faced, having a good time in Italy, having a little homage. We’ve got three Raphael Madonnas in this picture. And you can see, you’ve got this little group of English aristocrats gathered around one of them and paying homage to Raphael. Oddly, I think Reynolds was, I think probably a bit, although he was saying in his speeches, “Yes, you’ve got, Raphael is the greatest, you’ve got to study him.” I think he actually was a bit ambivalent towards Raphael. And he did this very naughty parody of “The School of Athens”, with, you know, sort of Strawberry Hill Gothic architecture in the background, and the rather decidedly unideal, unbeautiful English grand tourists replacing Raphael’s beautiful figures. But he was also quite capable of ripping Raphael off. This is Lady Cockburn and her sons, and, Reynolds was also very, very into yummy mummies, I must say. They really turned him on, and he liked painting pretty young women with their babies.

And there’s a clear memory of Raphael in this picture. Raphael’s reputation probably reached its apogee in the early 19th century. You have the German Nazarene artists like Overbeck, who really, I think this is another reason actually why people went off Raphael in the later 19th century, is there were so many pictures like this that are virtually plagiarising Raphael, and they kind of exaggerate the rather bland, boring aspects of his art. Of course, the artist who idolised Raphael more than any other was Ingres. And he said that when he was 11 years old, he saw an engraving after the “Madonna della Sedia”, which you see on the left-hand side. And it hit him like a thunderbolt! And it became an obsession with him for the rest of his life. And there are any number of paintings by Raphael where there are references to the “Madonna della Sedia”. This is a detail of his “Portrait of Monsieur Rivière” in the Louvre, where you can see on the desk there’s a little print after “The Madonna of the Chair”. And he painted a series of pictures idolising, glorifying the life of Raphael. And this is Raphael in his studio with his mistress on his lap. And you can see in Ingres’s slightly overheated imagination, the mistress of Raphael is actually the “Madonna della Sedia”. And I think I’ve said this point, because I did lecture on Raphael quite recently, and I was making the point that all his nudes, really, are fantasies of a Raphael Madonna with no clothes on. And this is again, Ingres on the left-hand side, almost a pastiche of “The Sistine Madonna”. Strangely, his great opponent, his rival opponent, bitter enemy, Delacroix, was also intrigued by Raphael. But this is really such a strange version. The yummy mummy of Raphael on the left-hand side turned into the fiendish Medea, who commits infanticide. She murders her children in order to get revenge on her faithless lover, Jason.

And another great irony, Manet was in his day, regarded as an iconoclast who was breaking with the traditions going back to the Renaissance. But his most notorious and iconoclastic picture, the “Déjeuner sur l'herbe”, hey, it’s directly based, the composition, the poses are directly based on the Marcantonio print after Raphael’s “Judgement of Paris”. Now, Ruskin also played a big role, English art historian/critic Ruskin. He was very anti-Raphael. He, if I can see if I can get the quote right, he says, “The tasteless poison of Raphael’s art has infected with infidelity the hearts of millions of Christians.” Here is Ruskin by Millais on the left-hand side. And Millais obviously took Ruskin at his word, and he’s drawn this rather naughty little caricature, parroting a soppy Raphael Madonna. And I end with, I suppose, the ultimate insult to Raphael, which is Max Ernst’s painting, very iconoclastic, very blasphemous, really, of the young Virgin spanking the infant Jesus, and of course, a Raphael Madonna on the right-hand side.

So, that’s it. I’m so glad I managed to get to the end without any more breakdowns. Let’s have a look and see what people have to say.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: “What is it about Raphael that made the PRB?”

A: Well that you, that is to go, of course, just what I’ve been talking about. Pre-Raphaelites, they wanted to, they felt that all art since Raphael had been corrupted by what Ruskin called “the tasteless poison” of Raphael. They wanted to go back to what they saw as the truthfulness, the sincerity of art before Raphael, and they blamed Raphael, really, for corrupting Western art.

“Apparently that is a portrait of Michelangelo in the front.”

Yes, I talked about that a bit later.

“Why are so many…?”

It’s the contrapposto thing, the heads at a different, you know, the twisting of the body. They want to get away from the stiffness of the art of Quattrocento. The wonderful drawing on the right of his father painting his pods is Raphael himself. It’s a self-portrait made when he was a teenager.

“Compared to the previous talk on da Vinci, et cetera, Raphael seems to have moved away from the libidinal, more Romantic.”

I’m not sure. I’m not actually, I’m not quite sure what you are saying, and I’m not sure, if I do understand it, that I agree with it. I mean, I think Raphael is probably a rather less, certainly Ruskin thought he was less spiritual and more material than the other two artists.

“Very interesting to learn that cartoons, the National Gallery collection…”

Well, there was a time when the National Gallery used to exhibit it next to the painting, but they haven’t done for a number of years, and I think that is because it’s pen and ink and very susceptible to fading in daylight. Yes, I think he wasn’t very robust. I don’t know exactly what was wrong with him. He did die young, and as I said, there are various theories about why he died young.

Q: “For all its outstanding qualities, 'The School of Athens’ is more linear than painterly, is it not?”

A: Yes, you’re absolutely correct, it is. And has been, linear artists have always revered it. Reynolds was quite critical of Raphael’s lack of painterly qualities.

This is Betty Lowenstein saying, “When I was in Rome in the mid-‘90s, I ran to see Raphael’s 'School of Athens’. To my utter horror and dismay, it was covered in scaffolding.”

Well, I hope you, yes, you did get to see it. Good, I’m glad for you.

“I find interesting the use of cartoon expression from 1400. Today’s use…”

Well, you know, words change. Cartoon, the original meaning of the word is a preparatory, a final preparatory drawing. Not quite sure how it became… But think how the word grotesque, you know, it means art that was found in a grotto. That’s changed completely. Romantic is a word that’s changed completely. There are many, many of these terms which evolve and change.

Q: “Without Christianity, would the artist’s work be diminished with a more limited inspiration?”

A: Possibly. As I said, I don’t think, I don’t personally find Raphael, although he has this enormous appeal to the Catholic masses. But I think it’s partly because it is so human and so real. I don’t see him, I mean, he’s, to me, he wouldn’t be one of the great religious artists. I mean, I’d say Rembrandt, El Greco, you know, those are artists with a very strong spiritual religious quality to their art.

Q: “Didn’t El Greco painting of a pope?”

A: I’m not sure if it’s of a pope. There’s one of the grand, there are various prelates by El Greco in that pose, including one of the grand inquisitor.

“Sorry, I confused Velasquez, and not El Greco.”

Yes, the Velasquez, I showed it, of course.

I’m not sure who you are asking me about, the woman in the centre of which painting at the V&A?

Q: “Could it be that the term cartoon is not understood?”

A: I’m not sure what you’re saying there.

“I went to a grotto, less than 10 in the audience, only about 10 others in the very..”

Yes, you are making the point I make, that somehow they don’t really have a huge popular appeal.

Pontormo, I’m going to be talking about him.

Can I, Renaissance just means, of course, rebirth. And it’s the whole period starting in the early 15th century, going through the 16th century. High Renaissance is a short period around about 1490 to 1520. But we, I did characterise it last time. It’s differentiated from the early Renaissance by the introduction of these three things: sfumato, contrapposto, what’s the other, and chiaroscuro. And actually the best, if you want to understand this, just get Gombrich’s “Story of Art”, and he clarifies that really beautifully in his chapter on the High Renaissance.

Somebody’s saying there’s a great exhibition in the Morgan in New York.

Q: “Who’s the woman in the centre of the ‘Transfiguration’?”

A: I presume that that would be the Virgin.

Q: “Do tapestries require cleaning?”

A: They do. And of course, they also fade. They require restoration.

And thank you, Robert, for your compliments. And six, yes, the Raphael cartoons are still in the V&A, and as I said, they’ve just gone, or they’ve just been re-displayed, but I haven’t actually seen the new display of them.

Thank you very, very much. And I’m going to be with you again tomorrow night, talking about the late Renaissance and the Mannerist movement. And thank you for your patience with our technical breakdowns earlier in the lecture.

• [Judy] Thank you, Patrick, and thank you to everybody who joined us, and we’ll see you in a bit for Rabbi Jeremy Rosen. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye!