The Life Of Raphael: Architect Of The High Renaissance | Raiders Of The Lost Art | Perspective

[Music] rafael forms the trinity of great masters of the italian high renaissance alongside leonardo and michelangelo all three of these artists were working in rome at the same time what an exciting lot really they were multi-skilled highly intelligent raphael was very very admiring of leonardo he did work in all these different media and styles and he was good at all of them you know no wonder michelangelo hated him while michelangelo and leonardo reached old age rafael would die suddenly at just 37 but in that time he still produced a staggering array of works rafael was highly prolific this was helped by the fact that he had a large studio it said that he employed up to 50 assistants in his workshop it was actually the largest workshop team that we know of for any renaissance artist so it was really quite unprecedented in its scale he was producing enormous amounts of drawings and paintings and commissions astonishing actually to have produced that amount of work during so little time [Music] many of raphael's paintings have been on truly remarkable journeys ever since his passing one is even rumored to have survived a shipwreck on its way to sicily apparently all of the cargo was lost and the rafale painting was washed up in genoa in its case the painting was in a box all nailed up and locked up and it was open to reveal this kind of unbelievable masterpiece it apparently had been saved by the gods because raphael was such a perfect artist there are all these sort of biblical parallels in the story that they're trying to depict raphael as a christ figure in renaissance painting but despite his enormous fame and enduring reputation some of raphael's works including the madonna of the pinks lost their attribution to the master as the centuries went by and ever since it's been a battle to reclaim his remarkable cannon rafael was born rafaelo sanzio da abino in the year 1483 but we know little about his early life however an early self-portrait that could very well be the young rafael demonstrates the talents of a tremendously gifted young artist his father was caught painted to federico de montefeltro in the duke of albino so he obviously came from an artistic background we know that he was a very well-spoken man according to visari that he was educated and that's because he grew up in this court setting and after his father's death it has been suggested that he carried on looking after the workshop and studio so he had a very early introduction into the world of of painting and patronage at some point in the late 15th century raphael left his hometown of urbino and made his way to umbria where he was able to learn from pietro perezino paragino was another renaissance painter from the umbreon school there's some debate as to at what age rafael got sent into his patronage but we do know that he had worked and he spent a few years in the workshop of peregino peregino painted serene figures with beautiful landscapes in the background of his altarpieces and this initially had quite an influence on raphael's style perrygino was famous for painting pictures that were sweet raphael turned it into something else it into something sort of refined and fine we know that they both worked in this very similar technique of applying the paint quite heavily and we definitely know that raphael found this a very formative time in his career later in life people could hardly distinguish raphael's work from peregino's work which means that he was very adept at imitating his master and also very talented rafael completed his training around the age of 17 and his first known commission was the baronshi altarpiece which was sadly damaged in an earthquake in the 18th century only a few fragments remain he worked on several other altarpieces soon after for various churches as he lived the life of a nomadic artist inevitably he would soon spend time in the blossoming city of florence where he came into contact with the other two legendary figures of the era there were three great masters of the italian renaissance so there was first of all leonardo then michelangelo and then raphael raphael was the younger of the trio leonardo was 30 years older and michelangelo was eight years older these two artists had a great influence on his own work they're the three greats the high renaissance and what an exciting lot really is the first thing to say and all very different raphael was very admiring of leonardo we can instantly see that he's gleaning inspiration technique really looking at what was new what was special about da vinci and and taking it into his own work but without losing his own sort of sense of color and drama which were really intrinsic to raphael leonardo's influence on rafael was primarily about the movement and the position of bodies in the paintings and when it comes to the mona lisa the pose was one which raphael also adopted in some of his own paintings in terms of the work of michelangelo there's a real sense of him sort of looking at that monumental sculptural aspect of the figures that you see with michelangelo and somehow i think raphael sort of softens those and makes a more classical if you like way of revealing the body there was no greater honor than to have the patronage of the pope and raphael was in luck with the election of julius ii the new pontiff was impressed with the talents of the young artist and rafael would be assigned to work at the vatican at the same time as michelangelo was painting the sistine chapel pope julius had a major influence on rafael because in 1508 he invited rafael to rome which was a major center of the art world and that's really where raphael made his career he had you know all these commissions to give out and and one of them was for his library though so called stanzi and those went to to raphael he was relatively young and relatively little known the stanza de la cena is now seen as one of his greatest masterpieces it's got the school of athens it's got the parnassus and the disputar now incredibly famous work so he was straight away working in the vatican taking on these kind of ultimate commissions alongside michelangelo's work in the vatican michaelangelo of course was a was a bitter old pig so he seems to have hated raphael from before he met him um and was always going on about raphael sort of stealing his work and stealing his ideas michelangelo loathed him saw him as a copycat artist said everything he knows he learnt from me so there was an instant dislike on the part of michelangelo for the younger artist i think he saw him as a threat for all that i must say rafael included a portrait of michelangelo in in the uh school of athens stanza so you know seems to be rather nicer than michelangelo was one of rafael's greatest paintings is the portrait of pope julius ii the man who was so taken with his work the portrait inspired many copies and for centuries it was thought that the ufc in florence housed the original by rafael but recent scientific tests indicated otherwise [Music] the portrait of julius ii is actually quite an unusual portrait for the time hopes tend to be rendered front on or completely in profile um and also it really captures the moment he's really thinking you can see that he's sort of lost in thought it was said to frighten people at the time there was a kind of living humanism in it that bothered people in the renaissance because up until then people painters have tended to deal in ideals um suddenly here was this man who looks a bit sort of sad and beaten up actually doesn't you know he doesn't look like a triumphant pope [Music] the several versions of raphael's portrait of pope julius it's a wonderful portrait showing the very pensive pope a lot of research has been done and the national gallery have established their version dating from about 15 11 is the original we know that the original hangings in the background behind pope julius were blue and gold textiles and there were symbols within that of the cross keys the papal keys and he then painted over this with the current background and so this was masked but we can see beneath it lie all these papal clues it was cleaned or x-rayed i think in 1970 and they found an invoice mark on it that showed it had been in the collection that clearly meant it was the original with x-ray we found a small number in the corner of this work which directly corresponds with the references and records of the bulgazi paintings so this really validated it as the true the true original [Music] pope julius ii would die in 1513 to be succeeded by pope leo the tenth raphael would be commissioned for his portrait as well he was incredibly busy working on different projects at the vatican and had an enormous workshop to help satisfy the demands of being such a successful artist but at the height of his powers it would all come to a tragic end rafale died suddenly in 1520 at the age of 37 and visari the important early italian art historian said that it was a result of a night of passion uh with um his mysteries he became increasingly ill over about 15 days and it was really a sort of slow decline over those days and he had the last right and then he had this incredibly grand funeral it all comes from vasari i desperately want to believe it that said the way that history was written in the renaissance was very kind of different from now you tried to write in a way that mimicked authoritative sources the most authoritative source was the bible if the sorry is telling the truth then raphael died on good friday which is of course the day that our lord ascended into heaven there's a definite tendency to to depict rafale as a kind of christ figure in vasari's historiography [Music] rafael's remarkable talents especially in portraiture would have a lasting impact on the artists that followed him after his sudden death his paintings would scatter across the globe as people clambered for works by one of the greats of the high renaissance and in that process incredible events would unfold raphael died on the 6th of april 1520. he was buried in one of rome's most famous landmarks the pantheon on his tomb as inscribed here lies that famous raphael by whom nature feared to be conquered while he lived and when he was dying feared herself to die from that point on many of raphael's most important works including his portrait of his friend baldassari castilloni would inspire future generations and others would begin their incredibly eventful journeys to their homes today the portrait of baldessari castellioni was very modern at the time it's very simple it's very naturalistic it's very paired back it's almost monochromatic and we know that he's wearing a winter dress so it was painted around 1514 and we also know as a character he probably would have wanted this kind of rendition of something that was very paired back simple this is what's made a completely timeless portrait and why so many other artists over the years have copied the pose it's had an astonishing influence this painting titian saw it and did his own version based on it rembrandt saw it when it was auctioned in amsterdam and he did several self-portraits which were in a similar pose and other artists have done copies of it and they include such varied characters as rubins and matisse so it's had an enormous influence it seems to crystallize something and i'm sure actually that portraits of peoples that are not straight commissions these are the portraits that actually really have a real intensity about them because the artist knows the sitter and so that i think can be transferred through the business of painting [Music] other works to have an immediate and profound impact on the art world were the rafael cartoons which became a symbol of the achievements of the renaissance he was commissioned to make these enormously expensive tapestries for the lower walls so you've got the sistine chapel ceiling by michelangelo um and then lower down i suppose to protect the cardinals from the cold you've got um these these luscious tapestries raphael did these full-size distemper on paper so-called cartoons i mean fully worked up paintings that that weavers could copy we know that they're focused on the acts of peter and paul and really he's looking at the drama of the composition here not so much detail because they'll then be rendered by the tapestry factories in in worlds so he wanted a dramatic composition that would really do it justice once they'd gone through to their new vision and tapestry raphael sent the tapestry cartoons or drawings to brussels where they were going to be woven and they stayed in brussels for some time and were later bought by a collector in genoa and then charles the first of england bought the cartoons and they came to the uk many years ago they were put on long term loan to the victorian albert museum just like the rafael cartoons many of his works have had to survive extensive travel across the world passing through various royal and state collections one of raphael's paintings of christ falling on the way to calvary has even developed its own mythology raphael had created the work for a sicilian monastery called los pasimo but its journey there was fraught with peril vasari wrote a story about the painting and to talk about the way it was taken to sicily where it was due to go to a monastery and there was a shipwreck the boat that was going from rome to sicily was obviously blown far off course and went up to genoa the ship was completely destroyed and everything was turned to matchwood apart from miraculously the picture which which floated its happy way to um to genoa and the genoese looked and thought look that's miraculous we're going to keep it it was said that the waves in the wind respected raphael's work and wanted to save it and then the monks at the monastery got were that it had been found it had been rescued and they then petitioned the pope to return the painting to them in the 1660s the painting was bought by philip ii of spain and it went to madrid and then when napoleon invaded spain in the early 19th century it was seized and taken by his troops to paris and later returned and it ended up in the prado museum where it still is today one of the most important paintings there falling on the way to calvary is not the only work by rafael to be seized by invading forces the nazis stole his portrait of a young man which may very well be raphael himself and it's potentially the most valuable missing work of art in the world the portrait of a young man or assumed self-portrait of raphael was taken by the nazis from poland during the second world war and most art historians or many are historians are in agreement that it's probably the most valuable painting ever to go missing in january 1945 when the allies were pushing forward into poland the painting just disappeared we can recognize raphael from his own self-portrait in the school of athens the similarities were drawn between the portrait of the young man and his own self-rendering in the school of athens that point towards it being a self-portrait it represents one of the very most important paintings that was lost during the second world war leonardo's masterpiece the lady with an ermine was also stolen alongside the raphael portrait the monuments men would heroically rescue the leonardo at the end of world war ii sadly the rafael would not share the same luck not all of raphael's works have vanished in quite so dramatic of fashion his madonna of the pinks has only recently been reattributed to him the painting was highly influenced by leonardo's own benoit madonna a work that was lost for centuries before making a sensational reappearance not only did rafael take inspiration from leonardo during his lifetime it would seem his paintings would also follow a similar journey 20 or so years ago nicholas penny who later became director of the national gallery was visiting anik castle which belongs to the duke of northumberland nicholas penny saw this painting in a corridor up there and thought that that was a very good painting and he looked at it closely and he saw this pentimenti and was surprised and said well you know if this is a copy this shouldn't have this he saw the painting got interested in it and asked whether it could be examined it wasn't their painting so they couldn't take any paint samples as such but they could really look very very closely and look at the surface it's a completely beautiful painting there's a charming piece of transparent veiled fabric that is just sort of lightly over the madonna's ear which is just exquisite painting there are literally dozens of copies of raphael's madonna of the pinks which shows the importance of the painting and it was very difficult to establish which was the original [Music] the test the national gallery undertook would establish the painting as an original raphael they subsequently purchased the painting for 22 million pounds in 2004 although raphael has always been considered a master it would seem that even his great works could get lost in the shuffle of time i think you just have to remember that these are centuries-old paintings that are moved between collections records get lost destroyed changed so it's difficult to really match up an exact record of what the artist's inventory was with an exact painting they've become victims of their own success so they get copied so if you paint something that becomes an iconic picture then everybody else is going to paint it as well i'm not painting like it they're going to try and be it not necessarily dishonestly but just as a sort of new testimony to its greatness so i think a lot of work sat under a cloud of is it by him is it not by him and also found themselves geographically scattered all over the world in different hands and just over time some of them shrunk away from the public view raphael's paintings have entranced people all over the world and we can only be grateful that so many of them have managed to survive the trials and tribulations that they've been put through and we can only hope that his missing portrait will also return to us one day

Channel: Perspective

Views: 50,188

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, art history, history documentary, art history documentary, art documentary, documentary movies - topic, italian renaissance, renaissance art, classical art, art history renaissance, high renaissance art history, high renaissance, high renaissance documentary, raphael artist, raphael artist documentary, raphael artist biography, raphael art history, raphael artist renaissance, raphael

Id: Z0J61GFoOSs

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020