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Raphael
A definitive overview of one of the most celebrated figures of the Italian Renaissance
Among the great figures of the Italian Renaissance, Raphael (1483–1520) is unarguably the artist who has been most widely and consistently admired across the centuries. He had an extraordinary and perhaps unrivaled capacity for self-reinvention—as he progressed from Umbria to Florence and Rome—and an ability to draw strength from the other great artists around him, seemingly growing in stature the more daunting the competition became. This insightful, impeccably researched, and comprehensive volume chronicles the progress of his career in all its richness and complexity. Sumptuous production values and generous illustrations go hand in hand with its rigorous and wide-ranging scholarship. The essays explore Raphael’s paintings and drawings, his frescoes in the Vatican Stanze, his designs for tapestries, sculptures and prints, and his engagement with architecture. Detailed and authoritative catalogue entries examine many of Raphael’s finest works.
Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press
Exhibition The National Gallery, London
April 9–July 31, 2022
Among the great figures of the Italian Renaissance, Raphael (1483–1520) is unarguably the artist who has been most widely and consistently admired across the centuries. He had an extraordinary and perhaps unrivaled capacity for self-reinvention—as he progressed from Umbria to Florence and Rome—and an ability to draw strength from the other great artists around him, seemingly growing in stature the more daunting the competition became. This insightful, impeccably researched, and comprehensive volume chronicles the progress of his career in all its richness and complexity. Sumptuous production values and generous illustrations go hand in hand with its rigorous and wide-ranging scholarship. The essays explore Raphael’s paintings and drawings, his frescoes in the Vatican Stanze, his designs for tapestries, sculptures and prints, and his engagement with architecture. Detailed and authoritative catalogue entries examine many of Raphael’s finest works.
Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press
Exhibition The National Gallery, London
April 9–July 31, 2022
- GenresArtNonfictionArt History
328 pages, Hardcover
Published June 14, 2022
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March 31, 2024What an impressive and rich pictorial legacy Raphael has left us. The introductory essay by Henry and Ekserdjian charts Raphael's meteoric rise and notes his effective management of his large workshop as his reputation grew. They raise an interesting intermedial connection between offsets in tapestry design (woven from the back) and printmaking and how Raphael experiments with figural orientation, as in the case of the red chalk preparatory drawing of Christ’s Charge to Peter (RCT) which was produced by wetting the original drawing and producing a mirror image through direct impression.
Nesselrath's essay on the Vatican stanze also carefully illuminated Raphael's artistic prowess not only in depicting light and capturing realism in frescoes, but also in his savviness and patience in navigating the iconographic changes that depended on Julius II's and Leo X's politico-theological imperatives. He describes Raphael's "final achievement of glazing with fresco pigments, an almost impossible technique: it involved applying paint wet on wet without smudging and the implications of carbonatation, which is an asset in oil painting, but allowed him to create in 28 giornate, that is, less than a month, his engaging night piece, the Liberation, which is entirely autograph."
Nesselrath's essay on the Vatican stanze also carefully illuminated Raphael's artistic prowess not only in depicting light and capturing realism in frescoes, but also in his savviness and patience in navigating the iconographic changes that depended on Julius II's and Leo X's politico-theological imperatives. He describes Raphael's "final achievement of glazing with fresco pigments, an almost impossible technique: it involved applying paint wet on wet without smudging and the implications of carbonatation, which is an asset in oil painting, but allowed him to create in 28 giornate, that is, less than a month, his engaging night piece, the Liberation, which is entirely autograph."
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