Raphael: A Real Renaissance Man

Raphael was only 37 when he died in Rome in 1520; "Here no one is speaking of anything other than the death of this good man," a Mantuan envoy reported back home in a letter the following day. "But his second life, that of his Fame, which is not subject to time or death, will be eternal." 

Pandolfo Pico's prediction to Isabella d'Este was not wrong. Five centuries on, the National Gallery in London has put together a varied and impressive collection of works, reproductions and video to illustrate that Raphael was not just a great painter of oils and frescoes, but a multi-talented architect, archaeologist, draughtsman, designer of tapestries, prints and mosaics as well. A real Renaissance man, in fact, up there with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. 

This is not quite a blockbuster exhibition; not surprisingly, you won't be seeing The Sistine Madonna from Dresden, for example, with possibly the two most commercialised cherubs in art history. But it does not disappoint: The National has secured rather a lot of exceptional Raphael paintings from Italian museums in particular for this show with more than 90 exhibits, giving a rounded run-through of a short but packed career; it's the first such overview, the National says, outside Italy.

What marks Raphael out? There's a delightful tenderness, a softness, a serenity to so much of his painting, and that's particularly notable in the religious works that naturally make up a large part of this exhibition. 

It leads to some surprising discoveries, such as this early St Sebastian, created right at the start of Raphael's career in Urbino, when he can have been no more than 20. The saint, by legend a Roman soldier, is traditionally depicted almost naked, bound to a stake and shot through with arrows, persecuted for his faith. Raphael's Sebastian is fully clothed, with an angelic, maidenly soft face. He holds the arrow as if it were a quill pen. 

There's passion in Raphael's Saint Catherine of Alexandria; she looks to the heavens in ecstasy, but there's not much of a sense of impending martyrdom here. She leans on the wheel on which she is to be broken, though her body is twisted not in torture but in rapture, its sinuousness echoed in the folds of her robes and the spirals of her hair.

We'd have liked to have brought you a broader selection of pictures from this show than we actually can, but frustratingly, there are no-photography signs on virtually all of the artworks and documents that have come over from Italy (even, bizarrely, a virtually new plywood, resin and plastic architectural model later on in the exhibition; what's that all about?). So you'll just have to follow these links to admire Raphael's ambitious and confident youthful Self-Portrait from the Uffizi and the 1505 portrait of an unidentified woman known as La Muta from Urbino. 

It's probably his Madonnas that are Raphael's great triumph, and there's a room full of them here. You can see how he developed a growing mastery of the subject matter of Virgin and Child over a short time. The Terranuova Madonna from 1505-06, on loan from Berlin, doesn't really take advantage of the opportunities offered by the round tondo form -- it's as if it's a square painting cropped to fit the circle -- but the Alba Madonna from four or five years later certainly does. Admire the dynamic interaction between Mary, Jesus and John the Baptist, revolving around the cross grasped by the infant. 

By this stage in his career, Raphael had progressed from Urbino to Florence and on to Rome, working first for Pope Julius II's banker, Agostino Chigi, and then for the pontiff himself, a great patron of the arts.

Julius II was one of the most powerful men of his age, but that's not the impression you get from Raphael's portrait. Not a ruthless leader on a throne but a frail, ageing man, weighed down by care. He's seated in a chair adorned with golden acorns (the Pope's family name, della Rovere, comes from the Italian for oak) and his features are softened by a silver beard, which he grew following a military defeat by the French.

This portrait is in a section called Working for Two Popes; sadly, we don't get to see Raphael's portrait of Julius's successor, Leo X, a member of the Medici family, which hasn't made it over from the Uffizi. 

Obviously, you can't transport a Raphael fresco to London from Rome, either, but dominating this room is a magnificent reproduction, close to full scale and at eye-level, of the School of Athens fresco, which Julius commissioned Raphael to make for one of the walls in the Vatican Palace. It depicts an imaginary gathering of the great philosophers of ancient Greece, and here, right at the centre, are Plato, pointing towards the heavens, and Aristotle, gesturing towards the ground. 

Around them, others interact, exchanging ideas and propagating knowledge. Pythagoras sits surrounded by students eager to see what he is writing; Euclid demonstrates a geometric principle; and not too far away, Raphael paints himself into the edge of the scene, his unmistakable face staring out at us from behind a pillar. It's a stunning piece of art; it's rather a shame that you have to keep nipping to one end to read not-very-large captions to work out who's who, when what you really want is a cast list right in front, like a brass panorama plate at a viewpoint perhaps.

A similarly odd presentation decision comes when Raphael's architectural achievements are on show in the smallest room in the exhibition; there's an excellent video but no seats to watch it from, and because everyone has to crowd in you feel you're a bit in the way moving round to look at exhibits on the walls. Among the buildings Raphael worked on in Rome are the church of Sant'Eligio degli Orefici and the Medici summer residence, the Villa Madama.  

Nearby, there's plenty of space to compare a Raphael design for a tapestry of the Acts of Apostles with the finished product, woven in Brussels for the Vatican. In this post, we've focused very much on the painting, partly because it's more photogenic, but this show also has a wealth of beautiful drawings and prints, poetry and Raphael's fascinating correspondence on saving the heritage of Ancient Rome from the developers.

The final room is packed with portraits of Raphael's patrons and friends. From a private collection, there's Lorenzo de' Medici, rivalling Henry VIII for sumptuous power-dressing, from the Louvre, there's Baldassare Castiglione, the author of a book on how to be a Renaissance gentleman, and in equally intimate mode, the Florentine banker and art collector, Bindo Altoviti. 

Again, we couldn't take a picture of the mysterious Donna Velata on loan from the Uffizi, an unidentified woman in an elaborate froth of a gold-and-white costume, a picture which seems to have been added to the exhibition at the last moment. She hangs opposite the suggestive semi-nude La Fornarina, often assumed to be a private likeness of a lover of Raphael's. 

In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari wrote that Raphael died of a surfeit of love. Whether that's true or not, his second life of Fame lives on at the National Gallery, and this is an exhibition not to be missed if you love Renaissance art. 

Practicalities

Raphael is on at the National Gallery in London until July 31. It's open daily from 1000 to 1800, with lates on Fridays to 2100. Standard admission is £24 Monday to Friday (£26.50 with Gift Aid), £26 at the weekend (£29 with a donation); book online here. If you want the audio guide, that'll be another £5, thank you very much. Factor in between two and 2 1/2 hours to take in the exhibition fully. The National Gallery is on the north side of Trafalgar Square, just a couple of minutes from Charing Cross or Leicester Square stations on the rail and Underground networks.

Images

Raphael, Saint Sebastian, about 1502-03, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
Raphael, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, about 1507. © The National Gallery, London
Raphael, The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (‘The Alba Madonna’), c. 1509-11, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Courtesy National Gallery of Art

Raphael, Portrait of Pope Julius II, 1511, National Gallery, London

Detail from large-scale photographic reproduction of Raphael, The School of Athens, 1509-11, Vatican, as displayed in National Gallery

Raphael, Bindo Altoviti, about 1516-18, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Raphael, Portrait of a Woman ('La Fornarina'), 1519-20, Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Rome