The Warrior Pope: Raphael’s ‘Pope Julius II’ | Talks for All | National Gallery

hello and welcome to the National Gallery my name is Matias wibble and I am the curator of 16th century Italian paintings here at the gallery that means this room and the ones you have around here this is part of a series of lunchtime talks on selected paintings in the gallery and they happen every Wednesday you could find the program online or by going to the information desk my colleagues will be talking about a wide variety of paintings over the next several weeks this is the second of six I am talking about this picture the portrait of julius ii by raphael it was part of the foundational collection of the National Gallery the first Raphael to end of the collection it belonged to Julius Angerstein who was a banker and whose collection became the foundation of the National Gallery along with the Beaumont collection but that's a different story I want to concentrate more and what we see and the context in which this painting was made originally what we see here is a pope and I think he is recognizable as a pope because we know what probes where but also because this picture has basically set the standard for papal portraiture ever since this is one of the quintessential portraits of the European tradition in part because it does this it's a portrait of power but it's also a portrait of strong personal resonance and we recognize it in part because it's famous in itself but also through the many derivations and other like portraits inspired by it most famously by Velasquez by Titian but also by Raphael's contemporaries sympathy Ardell jambo and a politician and also actually and serendipitously over there this gives you only people's own a portrait of a Cardinal over there you can see that it's based very much on the model established here the Cardinal sits in a chair in the same very much the same way as you see here that's a Roman picture of the two generations hence two generations after this it reverberated through Pacino and Dominic Eno and to the 20th century Francis Bacon famously made his reinterpretation of Velasquez very famous portrait of innocent the tenth so it's it's it's one of these pictures that has always gathered a lot of attention and it was immediately recognized as a major work when it was first exhibited to the public in 1513 at Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome at the high altar to the left of the the main image of the Virgin and Child at the high altar in that church where everybody saw it and we have the first records of it at that point the sitter julius ii had been dead for about eight months and it's the story behind that and how it ended up in central Popolo that I will be focusing on here we recognize him as a pope as I said he is sitting in a high back chair he is wearing his choir dress not his full regalia not the stole that he will wear when giving Mass this is his qui a dress so when he is at an official function but not performing Mass and that includes the ricotta the white cassock that he wears here it includes the moat seta which is this red cope ermine line that you see very very finely rendered by Raphael the little pieces of the lining sticking out under the buttons and the camera which is the red cap he's sitting in a high back chair with but these two gilded pummels very prominently displayed I'll return to those and behind him is a green curtain a damask curtain which establishes I mean the color coding of this is very strong it's a red and the white in themselves great contrasting colors and then against the green it wasn't always thus I'll return to that too so that's what we see and it's this is a portrait meant to represent the Pope's power to an extent it's a portrait of power but it's not just that pope julius ii had been made pope in 1503 he was of the della Rovere family which was a family from north northwestern Italy from Liguria and who's whose power center was in Urbino and he was he immediately asserted himself very powerfully as Pope and and also as somebody who could clean up after his predecessor Alexander the sixth the the infamous Borgia Pope which whose whose reign has been gunned down in history as one of the one of the most the most horrible in in the in the history of the papacy and he he was also very controversial Julius a second he was a very assertive Imperial Pope he expanded the the reach of the papal state further than anyone what he had done before he engaged in war throughout most of his career so became known as the warrior Pope and was widely hated by his enemies but very powerful and what he also did was to re-establish really Rome as the center of power in one of the main centers of power power in Europe Rome had since the Great Schism about not not even a century before where the where there are two popes one in Avignon and one in Rome Rome had sort of gone gone to seed a bit it was not no even though it was set to the seat of the papacy it was no longer the great city that it had once been and Julius a second in stated a very progressive and very ambitious program of renovation of the city and he was one of the because of that he was one of the great great patrons of art one of the greatest in European history he was the patron of Bramante who built the Belvedere behind the the papal palace who built who was who initially planned the new st. Peter's which was later finished by other architects including Michelangelo he was the patron of indeed of Michelangelo who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling for him and who also planned his great almost Emperor like tomb for Saint Peters which never you never finished but that was really one of the ambitions and indeed of Raphael who painted his private apartments in the papal palace on the third floor the the the stands a as they're called and which have some of rafa's most famous paintings including the School of Athens with all the philosophers one of the quintessential images of European culture and he was actually painting those rooms when he was painting this this portrait Rafa so very important in terms of art patronage I've used this this term an imperial Pope he was he was very consciously associating himself with the Roman emperors he took the name Julius from Julius Caesar or at least that's that's a conjecture I mean it's it's clear that he was aware of that example of the first Roman Emperor and and indeed somebody who was not shy of asserting the power of the of the Roman Empire in terms of its its territorial possessions which he expanded and of course his wars against the goal which again for Julius his his main enemy through his reign was the French so there is that association with Julius a second but also Constantine another of the first Christian Emperor and and he used Constantinian Constantine imagery in his processions and so on so there was a real consciousness of a continuity from the Roman Empire into Christianity and and the modern Emperor being synonymous with the Pope at the same time there's a very regal qualities of this portrait it is based on portraits of Kings he sits in a throne it's the throne of st. Peter's it's not a secular throne it's it's a the papal throne but nevertheless and the ermine lines and breath would seta connotes something regal as well so there's there's those very very aspirational one might say associations for of sexual power as well and and that is one of the reasons why he was so controversial is that he was so focused on secular power so that's that's what Raphael is painting he's painting a portrait of power that asserts these connections so originally he had a blue backdrop we've discovered that through cross sections and x-ray analysis and infrared analysis that under it there was a blue backdrop which had symbols on it and you see still in the green here you see the crossed keys which had the keys of Saint Peter one of the symbols of the papacy what also would have been there was the papal tiara which is also a symbol of the papacy and then probably and a third symbol probably the crossed oak branches of his family della Rovere a means of the oak and that's his family so his family emblem would have been intermingled with the symbols of the papacy and indeed even though that was suppressed and in favor of the green which I think helped a picture immensely I mean if you can imagine blue and probably yellow for the symbols have yet blue and yellow behind that it would have been very busy and disorienting picture so I think for pictorial reasons it was decided to suppress that but the acorns you see on either side those pummels those gilded panels are signifiers of his family origins his della Rovere and indeed at this at this time the papacy was there was dynastic just like a kingdom would be it was the the major families of Europe competing for for the throne of st. Peter's and and there was an idea of building a dynasty for Julius ii his his major antecedent was Sixtus the fourth who was his uncle and was Pope in the mid 15th century mid to the third quarter of the 16th a 15th century and he looked up to him and imitated a lot of his plans and plans for renewal and architectural works and so on so that all those connotations are in here however there's something else going on - oh I should just say before I get to that another very clever way of Konoe ting his his power as the Pope and his connection with the church and with Christianity more like with ease the theological meditations is the fact that he's wearing these rings and the Pope would wear rings we usually allow three rings he's wearing a few few more but the Rings you see are in red white and green it's the same color scheme as the rest of the picture it's very clever on the part of Rafa to mirror the color scheme in the Rings and those colors at the same time are the colors of faith hope and charity faith being white hope being green and charity being red so so he's intermingling symbols of theological symbols with with those of regal symbols however there is something about this picture which is quite remarkable for somebody who was known as this aggressive choleric figure this this larger-than-life figure who famously asked Michelangelo when Michelangelo wars to portray him in a statue in 1508 in bologna to show him not with a book but with a sword because he was the warrior pope he here he appears rather frail he appears old and we see him from slightly above we looked down on him this is incredibly surprising that that somebody of that character when any any description of him would allow himself would even want himself to be depicted like this and we don't know why that is but his testament to Raphael's greatness as a portraitist I think that he manages to incorporate that human aspect of the Pope while at the same time giving him all the accoutrements and making this a memorable image that will anchor him in our minds as the great leader he wanted to be represented as there are good reasons why he looks like this he was in his late 60s which was old for this time and he was plagued by illness in these years when on campaign against the French in Bologna and in in the autumn of 1510 he fell ill and was like very seriously ill and on his while he was in bed with his illness he started growing a beard and this is something when people saw this picture at the time people who would have seen this picture when it was painted one of the things they would have first noted was it's the beard he's wearing here that was very unusual for an ecclesiastic from the Catholic Church to be shown with a beard but he grew that beard probably because he was sick and didn't have time to you know like for Barbara to come in and help him but he turned that into a device a symbolic device that everybody knew about he vowed he called this a penitential beard but lana had been lost to the French and he grew this beard and said I will not shave before the French are expelled from the Italian peninsula and in that he echoed his his own his predecessor Julius the first it was a fourth century Pope just after Constantine who also warned against the goal and war a penitential beard so there's a lot of historical awareness here so at this time he returns after he recovers from the recognition from this illness the people were actually afraid he was gonna die he recovers he comes back to Rome Bologna is belongs to the French at this time and Raphael takes his likeness at this point Raphael is also painting he's finishing up in the stands of the lasagne Torah which is the which is the great room with the with the School of Athens in the dispute ah where there is a representation of Julius with a beard in the guise of Gregory in the ninth and earlier and other historical reference which is based on this portrait it's the exact same outline of the of the picture this portrait was based was used for for that that's why we can date it so clearly and that that fresco was finished in August of 1511 so this picture is painted in the summer of 1511 almost certainly then he wears the rears appeared for a bit longer he falls even more ill and this is a time of great also great instability in the church there is a strong challenge not just a military challenge to the power of the papacy from the French but also an ecclesiastical child a challenge within the church the French are trying to make him illegitimate as an emperor and create a new schism at this time and various that many people are unhappy with his sort of dictatorial approach to being Pope so there there is a council forming at Pisa that meant to make it to illegitimate as Pope at this time in 1511 Italy various eventually displaced to Milan and then goes to Leon and nothing really comes of it and in the autumn of 1511 julius ii calls the fifth Lateran council which really brings a lot of his supporters back into the fold and reestablishes his authority but this is a moment of crisis for him this hasn't happened yet at the same time there is I mean there's there are deeper under currents of problems in the church which eventually erupt into the the Reformation and there are which of on the Luther and so on but that's that's after Julius is death but this is already happening it's it's a moment of great instability in the church so there are many concern he has many concerns he has physical concerns he has concerns of age of legacy but also political concerns and so on so it makes sense and Raphael is capturing this he looks inward he looks down his his eyes a deep set and I can't help but think that this is somehow it must have been sanctioned by the Pope and as I said at the outset the the portrait was initially displayed after I died he died in 1513 of this ongoing illness that he'd had he'd been several false alarms where people thought he was going to die and then he came back and this became part of his legend that he was he sort of prevailed over this fatal disease that he had but finally he died in 1513 if and and eight months later this is displayed to the to the public at the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo was a very important church for his family there are family tombs there his his uncle Sixtus had modernized it and he continues the modernization with Bramante his favorite architects and it was where he had launched several of his campaigns going towards Bologna coming back it's where he established the the military alliance of the Holy League against the French also in later 1500 Tober 1511 I think it is so it was a politically and personally important place and that's where the the it was displayed and became famous before that it was not famous nobody could have seen it before there were no copies of it or anything like that so it must have been kept private it may have been that this was a picture that Julius wandered as an ex voto to the virgin of santa maria del popolo that is a an ex photo is a way of declaring your faith and atoning for your sins and atoning for your sins before you die and that that might be what this is that this is in that in that sense of personal picture commissioned from the greatest portraitist in rome and indeed maybe arguably anywhere at this time there are few rivals but still and it was not meant to be seen by the public and then after his death it became - it became it became what it was that may have been the reason there may have been other reasons we don't really know it's it's but it's for me it's one of the great mysteries of this picture this very personal picture which has a great realism about it and a great psychological insight I think I will end my talk there it's it really bears looking at very closely there the details are astonishing even the way that his his beard is slightly unkempt famous beard is slightly unkempt and you'll see sort of wisps of mustache it doesn't quite have a mustache but their wisps of it it's not quite like the grooming one would expect and I should this is an aside I mean this may be a funny aside too to just throw in there the fact that the reason it doesn't have a mustache is actually fairly interesting it has theological implications it's because as I said beards were not worn by ecclesiastics at this time it was frowned upon for for priests and and bishops of whatever to wear beards because that was associated with the Eastern Church and it was associated with Muslims and Jews all like people who didn't get it you know didn't understand that the faith as it should be so beards for frowned upon and whatnot hadn't been part of of the accoutrements of it there was a there was actually a law against them wearing beards any in ecclesiastical the Catholic Church so that he's breaking with that tradition which has gone for about a century or something at that at this time and but he's making one compromise and that's by not having a mustache because when you drink from the challenge during Eucharist the wine will get into your beard and look very unseemly so therefore there's no there's no mustache this is so that's the compromise that he III should add that at this this time and it indeed you'll see that not so much in the pictures right here but if you go into some of the other rooms you'll see a lot of bearded sitters and indeed you'll see it in the in the later Roman pictures over there there's the pool zone and our special pool so when I display over there beards were coming into fashion and gentlemen started wearing beards and I think it was frustrating to a lot of priests at the time not that they couldn't so Julius is not direct successor he was very short-lived Pope Adrian six but then the Clement the seventh well there were several success sorry I'm getting it there was firstly or the tenth and Adrian and then then Clement the seventh in the 20s actually issued a bold allowing priests to wear beards he also wore penitential beard after the sack of Rome in 1527 it's a different story but that changed he changed the rules so but but Julius was a pioneer for facial hair inlet in the church and this this this picture reminds us of that and it would really have been one of the notice of last aspect something that was a huge digression to watch the end but I do I just I would encourage you to come and look at it more closely because it is strangely one of these is sort of almost miraculously I think it's one of these pictures that manages to fuse the almost mythical with the deeply personal thank you you you

Channel: The National Gallery

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Keywords: fineart, artgallery, painting, museum, arthistory, European Art, The National Gallery, london, raphael, the warrior pope, julius ii, 16th-century, italian art, pope, curator, talks for all, pope julius ii

Id: 3Y3lkw-A_30

Length: 23min 8sec (1388 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2019