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Formalism paper about Raphael paintings

This paper goes back into history and evaluates Raphael’s paintings through exploring their formalism. The formalism of Raphael’s paintings will be evaluated in this paper through contrasting their perception, structure, visual characteristics and their style.

All of Raphael’s paintings were in his sense of form where it was evident in his generation of human terms for divine truths. His earliest paintings were of traditional subjects; a marriage of the virgin, an altar piece of Tolentino’s St. Nicholas, the virgin’s coronation and a crucifixion. He painted them under Perugino’s strong influence for as a 50 year old man he had matured in his powers and his great crucifixion was in Sta. His 1496 painting in Florence of Maria Maddalena Dei Pazzi portrays his art at its best. These figures were bathed in space, and the landscape ahead of them had a splendid sense of distance thus creating the forms of line, quality, color and shape. They exhibited little passion or emotion. A somber placidity engulfs them which render a restrained meditation not of the distress of the cross (Boase 907).

This kind of quietism that was common to Francia’s followers in Bologna and to Perugino’s school which deeply impacted Raphael. He mutually partook of this withdrawal, the uninterested depiction of the sacred themes, the Umbrian recess before the full revulsion of Northern incursions broke into Italy. In 1503 the year he painted his own crucifixion he had not been in Florence yet. He had thus not perceived Perugino’s furthermost depiction of the subject; however, he was already proficient in his master’s style. He uses the same balanced design, the same mannered figures and the same distant landscape creating the forms of line, quality, color and shape (Boase 908).

Raphael never painted the crucifixion again. He never attempted action and violence scenes. The subject that preoccupied him for five years was about the child and the virgin. His treatment of this theme implied his believes in the incarnation doctrine. In some paintings he emphasized on the virgin’s humanity. Where the virgin acts as the medium through which the word becomes flesh and dwells amongst humanity. In other instances Raphael presents her as the Epiphany Virgin who presented her child to be adored by the world. In other paintings he presents her in form of the Virgin Mediatrix who because of her mother hood becomes the greatest mankind intercessor (Boase 909).

In the Madonna Della Sedia painting Raphael included a tondo form which he often applied to in order to project a final statement in this painting. Typical of him, he used drawings in the Albertina to enable his audiences to perceive his mind at work. He initially designed it as a rectangle, where the mother and her child formed a triangle, solidly founded on the virgin’s hand that rested on a book which lied on the table ahead of her. This was Raphael’s instance of firmly anchoring his figures, which he built internally through the opposing leanings of the two heads. This original design appears more satisfactory in comparison to the one he converted into a tondo. Something about its certainty is not clear; however, the creativity of its adaptation is substantial. In this particular painting Raphael makes the child more upright, his body is made to form a curve that is completed by the virgin’s bending arm. The tree branches also bend in compassion. It is this creative use of line, quality, color and shape to come up with ingenious forms that endears the audience to his works (Boase 912).

The creativity by which Raphael clad abstract ideas into forms of beauty and life is portrayed better in his Pythagorean picture. Pythagoras is pictured writing his discoveries in numbers and harmony while seated. The oriental figure that peers over his shoulder represents the impact of the East’s mysticism over his thinking. The boy that holds several diagrams before his master symbolizes the hope that the apparent nature’s complexity is just as uncomplicated as a child’s arithmetic. The mechanisms and spirit that typify learning and teaching at its finest are beautifully exemplified in the line, quality, color and shape (form) of the picture thus giving it its contemporary name the school of Athens (Watson 12).

Conclusion

Raphael had a great borrowing for academic motifs; he inexorably shared in the contempt of academic art. However, he managed to retain by virtue of all fluctuations of sophisticated taste; his deep rooted popularity amongst simpler minds. The Madonna Della Sedia and the Sistine Madonna which have been regenerated a record countless times in various inappropriate media are images that are so entrenched in both protestant and catholic Christianity that no dynamic aesthetics can dislodge them as religious symbols. After doing many religious themes he graduated into painting people as was the case with Pythagoras. His paintings captured all formalism elements. In all his works people can identify with forms such as line, quality, color and shape.

Works Cited

Boase T. S. R. Twenty First Century enlightenment, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 110. (1962): 907-912. Print.

Watson E.C. Science in Art, Raphael’s School of Athens. Prentice Hall: London. (2010): 12. Print.