RAFFAELLO: THE MIRACLE OF BEAUTY CREATED BY AN ANGELIC GENIUS
500 years after his death, the world celebrates Urbino’s great master. He revolutionized and changed artistic inspiration forever
Ameteor is a lightning bolt that rips through the darkness of the night—a fleeting, yet evocative event. An effective metaphor of dazzling enchantment destined to last its glowing time, and then nothing more. Beauty in the raw. Possibly traced back to this very blend of wonder and transience, of the extraordinary that fades and disappears, but remains entangled in the meshes of memory and individual and collective sensitivity. The great challenge of man of all times, in the face of such precariousness, consists in the courageous and indomitable attempt to freeze beauty in its most authentic and sincere essence, forever. The artist’s hand has the mission to seize the eternal, to try to fix it in forms and meanings, to preserve and pass it down, not only to contemporaries, but also and above all to those who will come after. On the other hand, art is the elixir of a long life, it is the most powerful and sweetest antidote against transience: the artist by vocation transfigures reality to continue with it the highest intentions and Raffaello Sanzio, the supreme Master of the Renaissance, was the one who, more than any other, thanks to his divine traits and exceptional talent, was able to penetrate the mysteries of creation and overcome the trappings of time solely through the strength of his painting. Confessor of an almost supernatural gift, Raffaello is handsome and remains forever young due to his premature death at the age of 37—the height of his life and career. His flame is suddenly extinguished, but the master is not a meteor, Raffaello is a rift in space and time—an indelible sign etched in the history and evolution of art.
THE DEATH OF A “DIVINE” MASTER
It was 500 years ago, while the Eternal City was struggling with the Good Friday ecclesiastical celebrations, on April 6, 1620, that the painter died of the illness that had ravished him for 15 days. A sickness, according to the biographer Giorgio Vasari, brought on by his passionate “love excesses.” Rome fell to its knees in pain and dismay. Another unfortunate events just days before his death, was the partial collapse of the papal residence in the Vatican. In retrospect, it seems as if they were deadly signs. The Christological similarities of Raffaello’s passing only strengthened a communal feeling among his contemporaries. At the height of his success Raffaello is in fact rightly considered “divine” and capable of achieving with grace and fullness the perfect synthesis of pictorial and architectural harmony, and overcoming nature itself. Not only that, Raffaello is idolized to such an extent that he is considered a reincarnation of Christ: even the date of his birth is moved to coincide with another Good Friday, like the day of his death, and on the other hand, the very appearance of the artist, as we see him for example in the famous “Self-portrait with a friend,” with a beard and long, straight hair, unmistakably recalls the widely used and recognized iconography of Christ. The Prince of Painters, born in Urbino in 1483, son of art and pupil of Perugino, a dazzling career that took him from Urbino to Perugia, Florence and Rome, knows in life a glorious ascent that leads him to be the man symbol of the Renaissance, bright bearer of a range of values
around which gather the dreams and expectations of men of his generation: the man at the center of a world built on ideals of beauty, peace and prosperity. The world represented by Raffaello, a gentle soul, an acute spirit capable of conquering the most illustrious figures of his time, is a sublimated reality, stripped of its most earthly implications, such as its wonderful, hieratic Madonnas, to rise to a transcendent dimension: in the atavistic struggle between man and nature Raffaello marks a fundamental point, his work is thus placed as a milestone for those who will come after him, alphabet and grammar for the next artistic language, an emblematic example from which to draw inspiration, so much so as to trigger a painting trend in his own way. Raffaello is the consecrated Messiah of beauty, angelic genius whose creative power is well synthesized by the words chosen by the humanist Pietro Bembo for the epigraph in Latin engraved on his tomb at the Pantheon, a sacred place where the painter himself had asked to be buried: “Here lies that famous Raffaello by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die.”
RAFFAELLO AND FORNARINA: THE IDEAL OF A LOVE THAT DOES NOT WHITHER
In the epic life as short as it was extraordinary of Raffaello, sprinkled with love adventures and excesses, one mythical love that never fades, that pierces time and history, stands out: looking at one of the most famous paintings of the Urbino, known as “La Fornarina,” in fact, even today it is impossible to remain unmoved in front of the sensual depth of the black eyes that look at us from the portrait. They are the eyes of Margherita Luti, or Luzzi, daughter of a baker from Trastevere, Raffaello’s muse and lover, wrapped in the mists of legend but despite this always powerful and evocative. Raffaello saw her appear from the window of number 20 via Dorotea and fell madly in love
with her. He began immediately dedicating verses to her, always wanting her at his side. Margherita’s face is an irresistible obsession, which is repeated several times in the artist’s mature works, from the Veiled of 1516 to the Madonna della Seggiola, from the Madonna di Foligno to the Sistine Madonna. Also in his last work, the Transfiguration, the face of his beloved returns, for which the artist repeatedly postpones the wedding with his promised bride Maria Bibbiena, niece of a powerful cardinal. The Fornarina of the painting is undoubtedly a symbol of graceful beauty in forms and poses, a manifesto of the Renaissance artistic ideal expressed by the revolutionary and aestheticizing sensibility of Raffaello Sanzio: on her left arm she wears a blue and gold bracelet with the inscription “Raphael Urbinas,” the artist’s signature and symbol of an inextricable love bond. It seems that originally Fornarina also wore a wedding ring on her finger, later deleted by Raffaello’s pupils. Whether it is true or not, it is a fact that, following his sudden death, the beautiful Margherita decided to close herself off from the world, taking refuge in the convent of Sant’apollonia in Trastevere. Throughout 2020, a red rose will be laid on the tomb of Raffaello at the Pantheon: the most romantic hearts will be able to imagine it as the posthumous homage to his beloved.
Raffaello Sanzio, the supreme Master of the Renaissance, was the one who, more than any other, thanks to his divine traits and exceptional talent, was able to penetrate the mysteries of creation and overcome the trappings of time soley through the strength of his painting.