Moofookimbob's Blog: Raphael & Renaissance painting

Raphael Self Portrait

Raphael 1483 - 1520

" Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work."

- Raphael was a high renaissance painter.

- Perspective in art developed during the Renaissance.

- Other techniques to make things look more realistic were also developed.

- The scenes in the work are very posed.

- Perspective rules: horizon lines, center points/focal points (usually a religious figure), eyes of painted people follow to certain points.

- Compositional routes, staged to create structure, to guide the viewer's eye to a certain point.

In the painting below, you can see that the line of vision for the painted characters goes directly through their hands to look at the person on the ground, a.k.a. the focal point of the painting. Everything in the painting is set out to draw your eyes to the character on the floor. The paint style is very gaudy, with bright colours in the foreground to bring your focus to the characters, rather than the background, which is basically there so that the canvas isn't blank. The whose scene looks posed, the two female characters are framing the male character on the floor using their postures and body language. This scene doesn't look realistic for many reasons, hence the Pre-Raphaelites preferring to use 'pre-Raphael' techniques to create more realistic paintings.

An Allegory ('Vision of a Knight'), Raphael, approx 1504

I personally don't like this work, in case you hadn't guessed! I think it looks very fake and doesn't appeal to me at all, but each to their own.

The Garvagh Madonna, Raphael, 1509-10

Again, notice how the lines of vision pass through the hands, how the painting seems posed and the colours in the foreground are bright and gaudy. To me, the figures are painted in a very soft way, for example there's minimal detail, like there's tone, but not detail. I can't describe it, it's like the faces are just soft, like ooh they're perfect and their skin tone is flawless..I don't know how else to describe it! It just looks fake. I don't particularly like the Pre-Raphaelite style but I hands down prefer it to this work. Below are some more examples anyway...just in case you're still interested.