Raphael: From Urbino to Rome
The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square
20 October 2004- 16 January 2005
The Pictures or the Person
- The precocious talent of Raphael is the National Gallery's latest
exhibit, although much of his life is hidden behind years of oil
paints.
At 15, in the tiny Duchy or Urbino, Raphael's self-portrait spoke of his precociousness-- a self assured style and grasp of complex artistic techniques gave doubt to the true age at which he painted it. There is no doubt, however, of his tenacity. Nine years later, Raphael was painting the Pope in Rome, glorifying the largest of cathedrals and wealthy patrons with a quickly perfected stroke and a winning talent.
The exhibit covers this pivotal period in Raphael's life, where Raphael transformed from mirroring his predecessors, to becoming emulated, himself. It works well to cover the thick aesthetic ground of Raphael's transformation, but leaves the secrets of his own personal life - a usually necessary aspect of such a holistically orientated exhibit - rather untouched.
It is broken up into seven different rooms, quizzically organized in the National Gallery's basement space, although perhaps the large, wandering crowds herd viewers somewhat illogically. Each room covers a different stage: Raphael's Urbino origins; his early projects; his studying time, in Florence; his success in Florence; The Borghese Entombment; his call to Rome; and his further success there.
Aside from a few of the advertised selections, the exhibit contains a lot of Raphael's unknown works-in-progress, which show transitions in line, tone and colour as his career grows up. Most notably are the Room 2's The Mond Crucifixion and The Consetabile Madonna, which reveal Raphael's keen sense of rhyme, design, and colour. Room 3 gives viewers a beautiful Da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, as symbolic to Raphael's learning period in Florence, but Room 4 exhibits The Bridgewater Madonna, with the Christ child squirming on the Virgin's lap, as an example of one of Raphael's most complex interpretations of the Virgin & Child. Room 7, Raphael's triumph in Rome, shows the intricacies of his stroke through the beautiful Portrait of La Velata, an opulently dressed woman thought to be his mistress, although she has never been identified.
The only real traces of Raphael's personality and his mysterious social life are in his own self-portraits, first at 15, and then a 1506 portrait, after his success in Rome. In both, they show an undaunted face, quiet and haunting, and full of secrets left unanswered in this exhibit.
- Megan Retka
