The Cambridge Companion to Raphael Edited by Marcia B. Hall Cambridge University Press, 65 [pounds sterling]/$95 ISBN 052180809X
This volume of essays, like its companion volumes on other Italian artists of the renaissance, seeks to reassess Raphael and his legacy. The chapters have been written by eleven North American scholars and two Italians, and range over such material as Raphael's early patrons, the organisation of his workshop, his use of prints, and his legacy to generations of other artists. As is so often the case with volumes of collected essays, it is clear that the authors consigned their texts at different times and were able to incorporate recent scholarship to varying degrees. The volume is dedicated to the memory of John Shearman, but only some of the authors have been able to absorb the importance of the posthumous publication of his Raphael in Early Modern Sources, 1483-1602 (2003), and none of the essays could possibly take account of what was published in and around the catalogue of the National Gallery's 2004 exhibition 'Raphael: From Urbino to Rome'. This is not a criticism, it is a fact of life, and the flurry of publications of which this volume is a part highlights the vitality of the study of Urbino's greatest artist.
Vitality, but not consensus. For another characteristic of volumes of essays is that there is no editorial thread and patterns emerge by happenstance rather than by design. A classic example of this is to be found in the differing explanations of Raphael's artistic formation. For Jeryldene M. Wood, he was a student of Perugino's in the 1490s; while Sheryl E. Reiss has him emerging fully formed from Giovanni Santi's workshop (a position that I have also argued, with Carol Plazzotta, in the National Gallery's exhibition catalogue). Another example is the differing explanation of Raphael's 'maniera oscura' of the late 1510s, which Reiss suggests was designed to appeal to French tastes and the way that these had been shaped by familiarity with Leonardo's art, and Costanza Barbieri attributes to the rivalry with Sebastiano's acknowledged mastery of nocturnes.
Reiss's survey of Raphael's early patronage is solid, and the coda on Roman patronage is valuable, especially for the way that it incorporates architectural patronage alongside the patronage of painting, although I fail to see why the list of painting commissions does not include The Madonna of the Fish (Prado, Madrid, 1512-14), apparently painted for Geronimo del Doce's chapel in the church of S Domenico, Naples (see J. Stumpel, 'A Raphael by Raphael' in The Province of Painting" Theories of Italian Renaissance Art, 1990). Nor why Cecchi's proposal that the first of Raphael's paintings for Taddeo Taddei can be identified as the Terranuova Madonna in Berlin is repeatedly overlooked: Cecchi's argument, published in the catalogue for 'Raffaello a Firenze', held at Palazzo Pitti in 1984, is that the third child in this picture is St Thaddeus, Taddei's onomastic saint. There are also some nuances of interpretation that are difficult to accept, such as the argument (pp. 22-23) that Raphael's failure to complete the Monteluce commission was exceptional (he in fact left various other commissions incomplete, such as the fresco at S Severo, the Dei altarpiece and various Madonnas). It is also regrettable that the photomontage of the Madonna del Baldacchino in its intended frame (fig. 4) is so misleading. Raphael's painting is shown with its seventeenth-century addition at the top and, as a result and to make it fit within the frame, the picture has been shrunk to a different scale. This is a shame, as it looks as though an interesting interplay between real and fictive architecture was intended.
Joanna Woods-Marsden's essay, on Raphael's papal portraits, contains a lot of fascinating material on what happened to the Pope's corpse after his death. I was not persuaded by the winter datings for the portraits (given that the mozzetta and camauro appear in a number of images), but the relation of the portrait of Leo x to the attempted assassination plot of 1517 (and to the creation of loyal Medicean cardinals) was compelling, even if some of the conclusions about pose, setting and the role of light seem over-blown.
Ingrid Rowland's essay is a curiosity for the way in which it asserts as facts questions that are very much still at issue between Raphael scholars, such as Bramante's responsibility for Raphael's call to Rome, The Disputa as Raphael's first work in the Stanza della Segnatura, and so on. I was also troubled by some of the portrait identifications, especially the claim that Pintoricchio is Raphael's companion in The School of Athens. Linda Pellecchia's readable account of Roman urbanism stands out as a slight oddity in the volume and is the only essay that seems to be only tangentially related to Raphael's career.
Bette Talvacchia's essay on Raphael's workshop is perhaps the most provocative. It argues that 'Raphael turned the necessity of collaboration into an impetus for innovation', especially in the development of a reactive managerial style that harnessed the particular (and diverse) talents that came to work in his Roman workshop. This is effectively contrasted with Perugino's workshop practices, although one must observe that some of the creativity within Raphael's drawing practice identified as novel in Rome can also be found in the pre-Roman (i.e. pre-major workshop) period.
Patricia Emison's reassessment of the historiography for the career of Marcantonio Raimondi is at odds with Talvacchia's conclusions, arguing that Raimondi operated at a greater distance from Raphael than has been assumed--at least after 'the first flush of mutual excitement'. This argument is entirely consistent with the evidence, but is marred by an over-excited explanation (p. 197) of the reasons behind Raphael's feud with Michelangelo, which centres on The Massacre of the Innocents and prostitution around the Ponte Sisto.
Linda Wolk-Simon's account of the changing winds of recent attributional scholarship in the field of Raphael drawings is highly instructive and is one of those essays that can be recommended to any student of the subject who too readily accepts the literature at face value. It would have been interesting to know her reaction to the further (and to my mind completely implausible) twist of Sylvia Ferino readmitting to Raphael's corpus three drawings that she had excluded (as Perugino) in the catalogue of the 1982-83 Uffizi exhibition 'Disegni Umbri del Rinascimento da Perugino a Raffaello'. There seems to be a Viennese tradition of autorevisionism and whilst an open mind is admirable, the results of this trend frequently seem to represent a backwards step.
Barbieri's essay is an interesting application of renaissance colour theory to the known facts of Raphael's competitions with Sebastiano. Although well argued, it has to be said that we still do not know; enough about this episode (especially regarding the relative chronologies of their respective paintings) for any conclusion to be very persuasive.
Carl Goldstein, Giovanna Perini and Cathleen Sara Hoeniger each consider aspects of Raphael's critical reception in subsequent centuries and add to the very strong literature on the subjects of Raphael and French art, Raphael and art-theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the less well studied area of how the restoration decisions relating to a painting by Raphael can turn that picture into 'an embodiment of its history through time'. Marcia Hall's main essay also has an impressive historiographic range and attempts to redefine some discredited period style labels and develop arguments from her earlier study After Raphael (1999), in particular some interesting conclusions about Raphael's development of the relief-like style in the 1510s.
The volume contains some factual errors that should be corrected: (p. 22) the Monteluce altarpiece was to cost 177 ducats (not 33); (p. 23) Signorelli's Martyrdom of St Sebastian was in S Domenico (not S Agostino), and so faced Raphael's Crucifixion (not The Coronation of St Nicholas); (p. 48) Raphael's letter to his uncle of April 1508 does not say that 'he expected other commissions in Florence and France'. The phrase in question refers to where the payment for the 'tavola'--almost certainly the Dei altarpiece--would come from. I imagine that this book will follow its companions into paperback, and I hope that the Brescia Angel which has been used for the cover of the book can be reproduced the right way round on that occasion.
Tom Henry is reader in the history of Italian renaissance art at Oxford Brookes University.
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