The Academy Awards in Hollywood are - as if under a magnifying glass - a lesson in successful and unsuccessful strategies for success and self-presentation. This year, for the 94th awards, Eva von Bahr, who was nominated in the make-up and hairstyling category for the film Dune, chose an outfit by Swedish designer Stefan Wåhlberg: the handbag was modelled on the head of Michelangelo's David, the silk dress was printed with Raphael's Madonna in the Green from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in six different versions.
Several things become clear here that have to be considered for Raphael over the course of 500 years: on the red carpet - in a highly competitive context - it is all about attention at any price, whereby the winning constellation can never really be predicted in advance. Eva von Bahr did not win the Oscar - it went to the much more modestly dressed team of the film The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Looking back, it's easy to forget what different options were available before a decision was made and what factors played a role in the final success.
Leaving aside the question of taste, Eva von Bahr was trying to signal the highest level of sophistication with her choice of dress. She was probably concerned that her art of imitation, embellishment and fiction was in the tradition of Raphael and Michelangelo, and indeed of both, because film make-up is an art of sculpture and colour. It is not known whether Eva von Bahr was familiar with the classic novella on the subject by Franco Sacchetti from the late 14th century, in which the women of Florence are wittily portrayed as the best painters with their make-up skills.
Once again, however, it becomes clear that the works of Raphael and Michelangelo alone have functioned as a benchmark for accomplished art for centuries and have remained famous - Leonardo da Vinci and later Rubens and Rembrandt are in a different league.
This is probably the greatest challenge of any study of Raphael: in retrospect, his actions and works inevitably appear filtered through 500 years of overwhelming fame. In contrast, I will attempt to reconstruct the decisive career challenges he faced at four moments in Raphael's life: Raphael's life and work thus appear not as the straightforward career of a genius, but as hopes, uncertainties, opportunities and fortunate decisions. However, it also becomes clear how little we know about these key moments in Raphael's life.
Florence 1506
In 1502, at the age of 23, Raphael was probably only half-satisfied with what he had achieved so far. Since his first dated work in 1500, he had painted six large altarpieces and had just signed the commission for a seventh. He had been able to increase his asking price for these works fivefold. However, the commissions came from Cittá di Castello and Perugia. In the art metropolis of Florence, on the other hand, Raphael had not yet been able to land a major commission. This seems to be a decisive reason why Raphael accepted the commission for another altarpiece for a private chapel in Perugia - opposite the Oddi family chapel, for which he had already painted an altarpiece: the commission from the Atalante Baglione opened up the opportunity for a narrative altarpiece, not a Madonna with saints. Raphael recognised that the opportunity presented itself for an artistic and art-theoretical demonstration piece that would impress the art public in Florence rather than the client.
Raphael's commission initially seems to have been for a Lamentation of Christ - as the mourning of the Mother of God opened up a parallel to Atalante, who had lost her son in a family feud. Several drawings, some of them very elaborate, bear witness to Raphael's reflections on this theme. But then something drastic must have happened: Raphael discarded everything he had worked on so far and switched to another subject, the Entombment of Christ.
Such a far-reaching thematic change could not be carried out without the consent of the patron, but it is unlikely to have been initiated by Atalanta Baglioni, but by Raphael himself. This was the only way that the painting could be used particularly well as a demonstration and advertising piece for the young painter. The executed painting combines a composition that only appears frieze-like at first glance, with two intersecting directional vectors and groups of figures that are partly moving apart and partly towards each other: With great effort and accompanied by John the Elder and Mary Magdalene, three men lift the dead Christ up several rocky steps to the back left into the burial cave. To the right, Mary sinks unconscious into the arms of her three companions; Golgotha with the three crosses can be seen above them.
For this new pictorial idea, Raphael had studied ancient sarcophagus reliefs depicting the carrying home of the dead Meleager - a scene that Leon Battista Alberti had already recommended as exemplary in his treatise on painting from 1435/36, quite apart from the fact that Meleager was interpreted as a symbol of Christ in the late medieval tradition of interpretation. Raphael now demonstratively combined this antique reference with a few other interpictorial references.
Contemporary viewers would have been reminded of a copperplate engraving by Andrea Mantegna from the 1470s, in which the rocky cave, the supporting figure on the left and the detached group of the Virgin Mary on the right appear easily comparable. Mantegna was the most famous artist in Italy around 1500, and this print was so highly regarded at the beginning of the 16th century that it was engraved in reverse by Giovanni Antonio da Brescia around 1509. Raphael had also copied Mantegna's dead Christ with his bearers and the two lamenting women into his sketchbook (now lost, only a copy has survived).
Mantegna's loose pictorial narrative was of course not only condensed by Raphael in its dramatic interaction and spatially unfolded in depth. Raphael's figures also clearly refer to works by Michelangelo: the dead Christ corresponds to the spectacular Christ of the Pietà group, which Michelangelo had created in Rome for the funerary chapel of a French cardinal in S. Petronilla next to St Peter's Basilica around 1497/1500, right down to the curling of the whiskers and the position of the fingers on the drooping hand.
Unlike today in St Peter's, it was placed so low that one could look down on the beautiful youthful body of Christ from above. The kneeling companion of Mary, who supports the Virgin Mary from below and turns her upper body and arms backwards, seems to want to compete with Michelangelo's intricately moving Mary on the Tondo Doni, created around 1504/06. Finally, the unusual idea of the bearers lifting the dead Christ backwards up the stone steps to the tomb was developed by Michelangelo in his unfinished Tomb Carrying of 1500/01. The intimately clasped hands of Mary Magdalene and Christ alone seem to further develop a motif from Perugino's Florentine Lamentation.
These references are not about pointing out 'role models' - Raphael would not need to do that and could conceal it much better. On the contrary, Raphael deliberately wanted to refer to these other works as reference figures. In the Pala Baglioni, he demonstratively engages with antiquity, Mantegna, Michelangelo and Perugino in order to clarify his position in one of the most important art-theoretical debates of the time about proper imitation.
Raphael did not refer to as many different beautiful models as possible, but only to the best ancient and modern artists. Raphael's almost square altarpiece also fulfilled all the requirements of an event painting ([h]istoria), as first developed by Leon Battista Alberti in 1435/36 in his treatise on the art of painting - this was always recognised and emphasised.
Only the thesis of a demonstration piece also allows us to understand an unusual type of drawing that Raphael seems to have developed for the first and apparently only time for the design process of the Pala Baglioni: he studied the figures not only clothed and as nudes - although at this time he was still struggling with numerous drawing weaknesses in the anatomies. Raphael went one step further. Two sheets even show figures on the level of skeletons.
These drawings, which have always been recognised by scholars as his own work, are remarkable for their obvious dilettantism. Raphael had no in-depth knowledge of human bone structure, nor did this approach really help him to improve his figures. It seems that these drawings were primarily intended to demonstrate to a critical audience, who knew of Leonardo's anatomical studies, for example, that Raphael also had a comparable command of anatomy.
It is probably no coincidence that Leon Battista Alberti, of all people, describes a design process that begins with the bones: "If living beings are to be painted, first imagine the bones lying beneath the surface and assign them their position [...]. Then it is important that the nerves and muscles are located exactly where they belong, and in the end you will ensure that the bones and muscles are covered with flesh and skin."
In any case, Raphael's two skeleton drawings are not really necessary, practical design studies, but a new, experimental form of art-theoretical demonstration pieces in the workshop, which made sense above all in the context of discussions in Florence, not Perugia, and which Raphael was later to abandon immediately.
The results of Raphael's demonstrative endeavours and his struggle for attention with the Pala Baglioni were not long in coming. In 1507, if not in the course of 1506, he finally received a commission for an altarpiece in Florence. However, he was unable to complete it, as new opportunities immediately opened up in Rome.
Rome 1508/09
Raphael moved to Rome in the second half of 1508. In view of the spectacular and incredibly rapid succession of frescoes and paintings that were created here over the next few years, particularly in the Vatican Palace, it is often said that Pope Julius II called Raphael into his service. In view of the actual evidence and sources, however, everything speaks against this idea. Rather, Raphael seems to have left Florence at his own risk in order to get a foot in the door of the large papal commissions in Rome.
It is certain that the painting of the stanzas had already been awarded to three experienced teams of painters who had proven themselves in Rome: Perugino, Sodoma and Peruzzi. This is an obvious procedure for a pope who wants to move into new rooms as quickly as possible. All the teams had already begun frescoing the ceilings of the three stanzas. When Raphael arrived, he apparently hired Sodoma as an employee. He does not have much experience in fresco painting. But Raphael had already produced sketches for Pinturicchio's painting of the Libreria Piccolomini in Siena Cathedral.
It is possibly this expertise that makes Raphael an interesting collaborator for Sodoma. It is also possible that Raphael was sponsored by Bramante - but it is also conceivable that he was recommended by Michelangelo, who had been working a few hundred metres away in the Sistine Chapel since 1508 and with whom Raphael must have been in closer contact in Florence.
So even if Raphael was not triumphantly called to Rome, in the course of just under six months he managed, thanks to his talent as a designer and draughtsman, but probably also thanks to his reliable pace of work, to first outdo Sodoma and all the others working in the stanzas and then to complete all three rooms in turn himself. The preliminary drawings also suggest that Raphael must have developed his ideas in close contact with theological and humanist advisors. Otherwise it would be difficult to understand why the central element of the host as the real presence of Christ on earth, which seems so obvious today, was apparently not planned from the outset for the so-called Disputà - the assembly of theologians and certainly the most important fresco of the Stanza della Segnatura.
And there is another indication that Raphael sought close contact with the scholarly circles of the Curia after his arrival in Rome: his six surviving poems are all notated on preparatory drawings for the Stanza della Segnatura. Only at the beginning of his work in the Vatican Palace did Raphael feel the need to demonstrate his affiliation to intellectual circles by writing poetry. Then as now, the right social network was one of the requirements for a career. The poet Raphael seems to be a further reaction to such a career challenge.
Rome 1514
Perhaps the greatest challenge to understanding Raphael is not his work as a painter, poet, printmaker or explorer of the ancient monuments of Rome, but his contribution as the architect of the new Rome. This is not a secondary aspect, as it might seem today, when Raphael is primarily known as a painter. On the contrary, after his death in 1520, Raphael is praised in a series of poems exclusively as an architect or as an architect and antiquarian. At this time, the social status of an architect who was purely intellectually responsible for design was still often valued more highly than that of a painter who worked with his hands.
On 1 July 1514, Raphael himself reported to his uncle in Urbino that from then on he would also be responsible for the new construction of St Peter's, namely as the successor to Bramante, who had died on 11 or 12 March. The official letter of appointment from Leo X followed on 1 August 1514, justifying the decision by stating that Bramante himself had recommended Raphael and that the latter had also proven his suitability with a "model" and an explanation of the construction tasks at hand.
It is about managing the largest building site in Christendom with new challenges at every turn. No source mentions any architectural training for Raphael. From 1511, he was probably in the process of building a loggia on the Tiber and the stables for the villa of the banker Agostino Chigi. From 1512, he also built Chigi's funerary chapel at St Maria del Popolo. Whatever one thinks of these building projects, they have nothing to do with St Peter's in terms of size or ambition. How can it be that Raphael was given this office and what does this mean for our idea of his role as an architect?
First of all, of Raphael's more than 600 surviving drawings, there are at most ten that can be unequivocally linked to building projects, not pictorial architecture or images of antiquities. This may have something to do with the fact that the precise elaboration of architectural designs in particular was left to assistants. Reference can also be made to the case of Bramante, most of whose drawings have also been lost.
Nevertheless, the new precision in the planning of building projects at the beginning of the 16th century should have led to an increased number of drawings and Raphael's fame as an architect around the time of his death should have meant that such drawings were particularly coveted and valued. Surprisingly, even the few contemporary sources that mention Raphael's name in connection with building projects do not refer to him directly as their architect or designer. The will of Agostino Chigi only states that Raphael and a goldsmith were "well aware" of the plans for Chigi's funerary chapel. And a poem from 1519 on the Pope's Villa Madama, which was under construction, does refer to Raphael twice, but as the "new Apelles", i.e. in his capacity as a painter.
It is also thought-provoking that in addition to Raphael, with the same salary and the same powers, Leo X also appointed the aged, 80-year-old Fra Giocondo as head of the construction site of St Peter's, as well as the experienced, 70-year-old court architect of the Medici, Giuliano da Sangallo, as "administrator and assistant to the work" with the same salary, and Baldassare Peruzzi, albeit with a much lower salary on a monthly basis. In addition, the Roman building contractor Giuliano Leni was appointed "commercial-administrative manager", an office that had not existed before - four other managers in addition to Raphael. By separating design and administrative activities, these reforms of the St Peter's building workshop under Leo X aimed to increase efficiency, as was also the case with other major construction sites of the time, such as the cathedrals in Florence and Milan, but not to this extent.
Even if Raphael can be credited with providing ideas and designs for façades, ground plans and ornamentation, it remains difficult to imagine how and when he should have acquired the indispensable knowledge in terms of construction and technology, especially for the dome and vaulted country house? A report from the Ferrara envoy dated 17 September 1519, which unfortunately can only be read in fragments, may indicate that this new challenge was not easy for him, as he once again had to put off his master, Duke Alfonso d'Este, because Raphael had not delivered a painting he had ordered for years.
The ambassador's explanation, even if to a certain extent invented out of a need to explain, provides an astonishing insight. It says that the execution was delayed "because such outstanding people are all melancholy. And [Raphael] feels this all the more because he is in charge of this architecture [apparently St Peter's] and has to be the Bramante [...]."
Can we understand this to mean that Raphael was appointed to an office in 1514, which then partly overtaxed him? And that the Pope's advisors realised from the outset that Raphael needed additional architectural and technical skills? That Raphael was possibly only hired for his designs, but above all for his ability to organise a large workshop? And that Raphael was not seeking a position here, but that his fame at the time ensured that he was given another, completely new task?
Rome 1520
During the final work on the Transfiguration, Raphael fell ill with a fever around 28 March 1520. Just four days earlier, he had been present in person at a notary's office for the purchase of a new building plot. On 6 April shortly after 10 p.m. - Good Friday in 1520 and the same day (or the day before) on which the Urbinate had been born 37 years earlier, in 1483 - Raphael died in his house in Piazza Scossacavalli near the Vatican. The next day he is buried in the Pantheon. A whole series of messages and poems on his death evoke the parallel with the death of Christ on Good Friday. Even a crack that had appeared in a wall of the Vatican Palace a few days earlier was subsequently interpreted to mean that Raphael's death, like that of Christ, had "opened up the stones/earth" (Mt 27:51).
The phrase that the "god of nature" died with Christ and the "god of art" with Raphael cannot be surpassed in its explicitness. Some authors who incorrectly give the age of the Urbinate as 33 or 34 were obviously thinking of Christ, who was supposedly crucified at this age. When Vasari then reported in 1550 that the Urbinate had been laid out before his last, almost completed painting of the Transfiguration, this condensed the idea of Raphael's likening of Christ into a highly symbolic, memorable image. It was not only the 19th century that would capture this scene in numerous paintings. When the "new Raphael", Annibale Carracci, died in Rome in 1609 at the age of 49, he was also to be buried in the Pantheon and laid to rest in front of his last work, a mockery of Christ.
For Raphael alone, the more than 20 sources close to the time of his death do not mention any such staging. Before Vasari's report in 1550, there are also no other known artist requiems at which the works - or even the last work - were presented. And in view of the short time of just half a day before Raphael was finally buried, such a programmatic laying out seems unlikely.
Surprisingly, Vasari's invented story of his burial was not followed up by another, well-attested and much more surprising fact: that Raphael was laid to rest in the Pantheon the very next day. According to the sources, he had left an astonishingly large legacy of 2100 ducats for this church, as no will has survived. In comparison: 1,000 ducats were earmarked for the monument to Pope Hadrian VI, who died in 1523. This money was to be used to architecturally refurbish and furnish a chapel, to erect a statue of the Madonna on the altar, probably designed by Raphael, and to bury him there.
Raphael had died a rich man, and it is not his extensive financial resources that are under discussion here. But the idea of a chapel in the Pantheon, which no artist before him had ever chosen as his final resting place, is. The few earlier tombs by painters and sculptors in Rome, by Gentile da Fabriano, Fra Angelico, Andrea Bregno or the Pollaiuolo brothers were not comparable in their ambition. Only the funerary chapel of Andrea Mantegna in Mantua, who died in 1506, can be cited as a similarly ambitious project.
Raphael's choice of the Pantheon, not necessarily the most popular church dedicated to the Virgin Mary at the time, is primarily due to his interest in ancient Rome and its buildings - including the Pantheon. He wanted to be buried in the centre of the ancient city, in the ideal circular building and at the same time in a church dedicated to the Mother of God that he venerated - and with a prominent icon of St Luke. It is not known exactly when the new marble framing of the aedicule, the marble statue of the Madonna and Child and the epitaph for Raphael were installed - in any case, the monument was already inspected in 1523.
All this shows that Raphael must have been preoccupied with the question of his burial place for some time - not just a few days before his death. The idea and arrangement are too unusual and well thought out for a feverish fantasy shortly before his death. At least three things can be concluded from these considerations: firstly, Raphael's death did not come as a complete surprise. According to the life cycle concepts of the time, Raphael did not die particularly young at the age of 37. The peak and turning point in a man's life was considered to have been reached at the age of 35. As a career strategist, Raphael had been thinking about his burial place for some time before April 1520.
Secondly, the location and form of this chapel are to be understood as a double reference to antiquity and, at the same time, Raphael confidently inscribes himself in the eternity of Rome with his monument. For all his veneration of the Virgin Mary and concern for his own salvation, Raphael's funerary chapel claims a whole new dimension and attention. Finally - thirdly - it is not a painting by the painter himself that adorns the altar, but the antique statue of the Madonna. In other words, Raphael's benchmark was ancient art; his dual project was aimed at reconstructing ancient Rome and raising modern art to the level of antiquity. By this time, Raphael had fully learnt the lesson of how to secure lasting artistic fame and what role such a funerary monument played in this.
Of course, Raphael could not have foreseen that Baldassare Peruzzi, Perino del Vaga, Giovanni da Udine and other artists would want to be buried next to Raphael in 1536, that a brotherhood of Virtuosi dell'arte would be formed at Raphael's tomb in 1543 and that the idea of a pantheon of famous artists and intellectual greats would develop in general from the second half of the 17th century onwards. However, this also signals that Raphael gave rise to a new awareness of how to immortalise oneself as a famous artist.
The result reaches all the way to the red carpet of the Oscars in Hollywood. Raphael's career - in retrospect a meteoric rise to fame, at least until the middle of the 19th century - cannot be understood as a straightforward path and the immanent development of a brilliant artistic personality. Rather, Raphael's interesting achievement also lies in the fact that at decisive moments in his life, when his options were open and his future was unpredictable, he used all his energy to make favourable career decisions, generate attention and use the right social networks. In doing so, he essentially paved the way for the modern art system.
