Like many Americans, I grew up believing that Leonardo and Michelangelo were clearly superior to Raphael and Donatello. If the Renaissance artists were the Beatles, Michelangelo and Leonardo would be John and Paul, and Raphael and Donatello would be Ringo and George.
This changed when I traveled to Italy for the first time 16 years ago and visited the Vatican. While walking through the Apostolic Palace, I came upon the most incredible work of art that I had ever seen. It was a large, panoramic illustration painted onto a wall, otherwise known as a “fresco,” that depicted the greatest scientists and philosophers of the ancient world gathered at the entranceway of a classical academy. I stood in wide-eyed awe at the sublime sight splayed out before me — the figures in the fresco towered over me like revivified giants from a land before time. This magnificent work, you may have guessed by now, was none other than Raphael’s The School of Athens, one of the most famous and oft-reproduced images of Renaissance art. I had seen reproductions of it before, but coming face to face with it was a life-changing experience. Among other things, I was dead wrong to have thought that Raphael was the Ringo of the Renaissance.
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If my pop-culture-and-art-addled brain hasn’t yet convinced you of Raphael’s greatness, then the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current exhibition “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” surely will. The exhibition, which opened in March, continues through June 28. The show presents over 170 of the Renaissance master’s paintings, drawings, prints, and tapestries, some of which are held in private collections and thus rarely reach the public. What emerges is a portrait of an artist who not only epitomized the ideals of the High Renaissance but also set a standard for artistic grace and beauty.
“Raphael: Sublime Poetry.” (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Raffaello Sanzio, now known as Raphael, was born in 1483 in Urbino, a small Italian town east of Florence. He first learned art from his father, a court painter, and from Pietro Perugino, an Umbrian painter who had studied under Andrea del Verrocchio — the same Renaissance artist who had taught Leonardo da Vinci. Raphael’s early works, some of which are collected here, such as a church altarpiece and his first full painting, make clear that he had mastered Perugino’s refined style at a precociously young age.
But when Raphael moved to Florence in 1504, he discovered that Perugino’s style was already becoming outdated, superseded by the next generation of Renaissance artists: Leonardo and another Florence-born artist by the name of Michelangelo di Buonarroti. Raphael soon set to work studying how he could adapt his style to theirs, with the goal of one day superseding them. Raphael’s art is so serene — it has nothing of Leonardo’s sly mysteriousness or Michelangelo’s muscular severity — that it’s shocking to discover that the seemingly placid Raphael was such a fiery competitor.
From Leonardo, and from Perugino, Raphael learned how to use mathematical and scientific principles to create realistic renderings of three-dimensional space on two-dimensional canvases. And from Michelangelo, Raphael learned how to portray human figures with sculptural heft. But Raphael’s most outstanding quality was his preternatural ability to fuse light, color, photorealistic detail, and empathy into images of sublime harmony, a capacity that first became obvious during his Florence years in his Madonna and Child paintings, several of which are on view here.
Images of the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus had been common for centuries. When this literally iconic concept came into Raphael’s hands, however, it underwent a revolution. Instead of depicting these religious figures as sacred, salvific symbols, Raphael, without detracting from their heavenly qualities, restored their humanity. In The Alba Madonna (c. 1511), we see Mary seated not on a throne but upon the bare earth. Her extended right arm encompasses both the infant Jesus and the infant John the Baptist. The Arcadian landscape behind them is clear and bright — Raphael was not a fan of Leonardo’s cryptic chiaroscuro compositions — and the folds of Mary’s rose and cerulean dress are so intricately rendered that it appears to be an actual, tangible piece of clothing. Most noteworthy, though, is how Raphael was able to endow Mary with a very real human tenderness — a feature at which Raphael excelled, given his own painful experience with untimely familial loss.
While in Florence, Raphael also proved that he was becoming one of the most superlative portraitists of his time. His portrait of Count Baldassare Castiglione, here on loan from the Louvre, shows his mastery in the depiction of form as well as the evocation of character. Raphael presents a man who appears to have been every bit as stylish and refined as Castiglione’s treatise on genteel manners, The Book of the Courtier, suggests he was. Dressed in luxurious furs, sporting a stylish black velvet hat, and looking at peace with himself and with the world around him, Castiglione embodies sprezzatura, the disposition of effortless elegance that is an Italian virtue to this day.
By 1508, Raphael’s reputation had reached the papal court in Rome. There, in the eternal city, Raphael received the commission that would earn him true immortality: the request to decorate the pope’s private apartments. It was in the Vatican’s Stanza della Segnatura, the papal library, fittingly enough, where Raphael painted The School of Athens.
Now, if you’re thinking, “As great as you’re making this exhibition out to be, they’re missing Raphael’s greatest painting,” well, you’re in luck. Here, in the Met gallery, there is a digital video representation of Raphael’s Vatican Palace frescoes, including The School of Athens. Yes, it’s not the same thing as seeing the actual painting with your own eyes — for that life-changing experience, you’ll have to go to Rome, as I did years ago. But the video representation, along with Raphael’s preparatory drawings for the papal palace frescoes, gives a taste of this monumental achievement.
Raphael did not get to enjoy his triumph for very long. He died in 1520 at age 37. His archrival, Michelangelo, was born eight years earlier and lived 44 years longer. But despite the foreshortened window in which Raphael had to compete with his peers, the Met exhibition is a testament to the fact that he did indeed reach the heights of his High Renaissance rivals — and perhaps ascended even higher.
Daniel Ross Goodman (@DanRossGoodman) is a Washington Examiner contributing writer and teaches theology and religious studies at St. John’s University. His next book, Dante’s Guide to Life: How The Divine Comedy Can Change Our Fortunes, Our World, and Ourselves, will be published this fall by Angelico Press.
