FRENCH SCHOOL, 19TH CENTURY, After Raphael.

"Ci-gît Raphaël, qui durant toute sa vie fit craindre à la Nature d'être maîtrisée par lui et, lorsqu'il mourut, de mourir avec lui." Pietro Bembo

The soft gaze of a young blonde woman posing with two chubby children partnered with engaged and graceful gestures. It is a portrait full of sweetness. There is a bucolic landscape in which the characters blend with a natural disconcerting and a few, small, thin trees that scatter some elegance. Expertissim presents a 19th century copy of a work familiar to art lovers who come often to the Louvre in order to get lost. Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist or La Belle Jardinière, as it is nicknamed, has not wrinkled a bit!

 

 

A unique life

 

Son of Giovanni Santi, recognized painter from Urbino, Raphael was born April 6, 1483. At an early age he learned to handle oil and brushes in the family studio then with da Forli Melozzo. But more importantly he studied Perugino, the undisputed Florentine master that he regarded as an influence for a long time. Around 1500, the young artist already had his own studio and directed students and assistants, despite continuing to develop. Raphael arrived in Florence in 1505 at a time when the greatest artists were working such as Michelangelo, Fra Bartolommeo and Leonardo da Vinci. This exceptional generation of Florentines, which includes the artist from Urbino, shape what art historians would call the "High Renaissance". Raphael then benefited from a rich cultural milieu to perfect his technique and seek inspiration from new manners of composition and arrangement of the figures in the planes.  La Belle Jardinière, which was executed at the end of this Florentine period, was a result of these new ways of painting. This was an opportunity for our painter from Urbino to learn to detach progressively from the dolce stile, the stereotype close to Perugino.  He now knew how to provide his figures with a very special expressiveness.

The Quatrocento was permanently buried when he left Florence for Rome in 1507 for he was commissioned by Pope Julius II della Rovere to decorate three rooms in the Vatican as part of a massive program of urban politics. He painted his more famous frescoes such as The School of Athens, but does he take it into account? At the age of twenty-five, Raphael became one of the greatest talents of the 16th century, an artist greatly in demand. The death of Julius II was not be painless for the artist because Pope Leo X invested as much as his predecessor in Rome’s cultural affairs. Raphael then saw his responsibilities grow. In charge of archaeological excavations of the city and the project of St. Peter's Basilica, he played a major cultural role in the new century. More than an artist, Raphael became a man of action. Nevertheless, he did not stop painting, as evident with Dona Velate, Transfiguration kept in the Vatican or the The Portrait of Balthassare Castiglione in the Louvre. He died quite suddenly in 1520, buried in the Pantheon after a magnificent funeral, that falls into today’s category of  "national".

 

 

Madonna, a woman, a mother, an Elect

 

The work

of Raphael contains no blasphemy, but was a new way of painting the Virgin Mary. The artist represented the  Child and the infant St. John the Baptist as chubby, playful small boys. Their facial expressions and postures are reminiscent of small children and not as holy figures. The Virgin is watching them with kind and gentle eyes like a fond mother. Marie has a curvaceous body and her clear and perfect flesh grants her a particular humanity that borders the divinity. The Quatrocento gave way to the High Renaissance. Raphael was so innovative that he could represent the volume, space and depth with great fluidity. Contrary to Michelangelo, who inspired the painter of Urbino, the bodies are neither powerful nor muscular but graceful and soft. The colors serve to accentuate the softness and grace of composition, but also give depth to the scene.

Raphael also recovers the perspective technique of sfumato (in three colors: brown, green and blue), an atmosphere initiated by Leonardo da Vinci. He also used the pyramidal composition which along with sfumato were new concepts to dematerialize pictorial space. The Virgin arranged in a real space acquires a modern humanity but does not deny its divine qualities. Raphael made real a synthesis of the achievements of the High Renaissance Masters. Knowing how to combine the strength of the line, the gentleness of  Perugino, powerful body of Michelangelo, the art of fusion and the perspective of Leonardo, he opened 16th century Roman to modernity.

 

 

The Raphaellite craze in the 19th Century

 

The canvas presented  by Expertissim is an academic copy of 19th century French school and is thus a testimony to the timeless success Raphael delivered. Because he was praised by his contemporaries for the grace of his drawing and the strength of his lines, he remains a major model for  European academicians until the late 19th century. Vasari, in his famous Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550), described him as  almost divine. Casanova said that no painter has surpassed the beauty of his figures and Delacroix finally asserted that the mere mention of Raphael "brings to mind all that is the highest in the painting”.

The French artist who faithfully reproduced this masterpiece without a doubt had probably spent many long hours at the Louvre to discover the pictorial secrets of this master. Like the original work, the French copy combines grace and academicism, volume and lightness, humanity and divinity. A fine homage to the painter of Urbino!

 

 

Pauline Balayer (studying at Ecole du Louvre)

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Reference: 490410

Period: 19th Century.

Dimensions: 105 x 74 cm (41-1/4 x 29 in.).

Valuation:
$2,536-$3,804

FRENCH SCHOOL, 19TH CENTURY, After Raphael.

La belle jardinière (Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist).

Oil on canvas.

105 x 74 cm (41-1/4 x 29 in.).

Good state of condition. Two minor restorations in the sky right of the Virgin and a minor restoration in the Virgin's neck.

Wooden and gilded stucco from with eggs and darts pattern.