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Raphael's great opportunity came in Rome, when Pope Leo X, chose him
to succeed Bramante as architect of St Peter's. This was an amazingly
courageous decision since at that point, Raphael had not worked on
any substantial building at all. He was much influenced by the historic
Pantheon. His earlier memorial chapel to the banker Chigi shows this
linkage. The dome and drum, with pendentives and crossing points,
are typical of Raphael. Carrara marble piers and Portrasanto and dark
African marbles, together with Oriental granite, bronze reliefs for
the individual tombs, mosaic on the dome, all can be found here, as
befits a banker. And here was presented unequivocally Raphael's personal
architectural vision
What, of course, cannot be denied is that, like Bramante, Raphael
came to architecture through painting. Yet he cannot be called 'classical'
as such. Instead, he came to architecture with an inherently pictorial
approach. It is true to say that the most powerful architectural
spaces made under the patronage of Leo X were not built space, but
painted images. Raphael's lessons were acquired through Perugino,
beginning with a genre that was unmistakably Gothic at the time.
But while Perugino was formally static in his composition, Raphael
by contrast draws out the viewer, as in the 16-sided temple in his
'Marriage of the Virgin'.
As the late Professor Colin Rowe, in his last work, completed jointly
with Professor Leon Satkowski, said:
'Raphael's architecture actively engages the spectator. Raphael
in Rome moderated the insistent classicism of Bramante. Attention
to the visual apprehension of a building is demonstrated by the
justifiably famous 16-sided temple in his "Marriage of the Virgin"
(1504). Unlike his mentor Raphael has created a convincing vision
of a building that separates it from the realm of background architecture.
Its exterior is not a planar surface but a complex assemblage of
architectural membering fully developed in light and shade. For
instance the angular piers on the lower level respond to the radial
transverse ribs of the loggia's vaulting, while on the upper
level, pilasters fold around the angles of the polygon. In concept
and detail, Raphael's temple is architecturally credible and has
the same fully three-dimensional presence that appears in his Madonna
figures of the same moment. But what truly puts this temple apart
from other painted buildings is how the observer's glance is drawn
into the picture by the concave arrangement of its main figures,
emphatically continued by their gestures, and led to the vanishing
point far in the distance through an open door.
'By accommodating the panel's original position some six feet
off the ground, the viewer thus looks not at the architecture but
sequentially up, into and through the structure as it were. Raphael's
pictorial system thus simulates the viewer's presence within
an actual space, just as he was to structure the viewer's perception
of the Chigi Chapel a few years later.'1
But to comprehend fully Raphael's true brilliance we need especially
to be aware of his underlying proficiency in the specific realm
of architectural composition, especially among his peers. Raphael
emerges as a true innovator. By the time he was working on the great
mise-en-scène of the Villa Madama, he had mastered
the details and measurements of Roman antiquity to the extent that
he could synthesise a complete, 'ancient' environment.
In the National Gallery, we should take care to discover all the
richness and genius of not only Raphael's paintings, but also his
architecture contained within, sublimely buildable, even if never
built. His architecture remained fragmentary, but should never be
marginalised, or worse still, excluded.
On Bramante's death, Raphael had been in Rome for only one year.
Leo X therefore deserves much credit for appointing him as architect
of St Peter's, yet without a single substantial building to his
credit. He felt confident to amend the scheme, which Bramante had
left incomplete. At the Villa Madama, towards the close of his own
career, he successfully fused architecture, decorative art, performing
arts spaces, and landscape design as a single environment dedicated
to the life, all'antica.
Reference
1. Rowe C, Satkowski L. Italian Architecture of the 16th
Century. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002: 57-58.
Michael Spens
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