Raphael

On 29 June 1502, a contract was drawn up between Cardinal Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, Archibishop of Siena, and the painter Bernardino Pinturicchio for decorative painting to adorn the newly built Piccolomini Library attached to the cathedral in Siena. This notably specific contract indicated that Pinturicchio was to paint the vault of the space as well as ten narrative frescoes on the walls, the subjects of which—scenes from the life of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Pope Pius II—were to be given to the painter in a separate memo. The contract also included many stipulations, among them that Pinturicchio was to take on no other work until the library was complete and that he was “obliged to do all the designs of the histories in his own hand, in cartoons and on the wall.”¹ Despite this, Vasari wrote in his life of Pinturicchio that “it is certainly true that all the sketches and cartoons for the narratives that he [Pinturicchio] made were by the hand of Raphael. . ..”² In his life of Raphael, however, Vasari lessened this claim, noting instead that Pinturicchio, “being a friend of Raphael and knowing him to be an excellent draftsman, brought him to Siena, where Raphael made some [emphasis added] of the drawings and cartoons” for the library.³

Vasari’s comments emphasize that the situation of a much older artist entrusting the design of an important work to an artist as young as the then twenty-year-old Raphael was unusual at best.⁴ Those comments have also engendered more than a century of debate regarding the authorship of the few drawings connected to the library frescoes.⁵ Although the preparatory studies connected with the chapel have traditionally been attributed to Raphael, late-nineteenth-century critics could not accept that Pinturicchio would have given the intellectual conception of the narratives over to the much younger artist and instead convinced themselves that the drawings were by Pinturicchio. With the exception of the Group of Soldiers in the Uffizi, the other drawings— the Morgan and Uffizi compositional modelli and the Ashmolean study of the Four Soldiers—are now universally accepted as Raphael’s work. Their bolder drawing style, livelier and more constructive details, and compositional sophistication compare to other drawings (and paintings) by the young artist but differ from the frescoes ultimately executed under Pinturicchio’s direction.

The Morgan drawing and the related painting depict the first meeting between Emperor Frederick III and his betrothed, Eleanor of Portugal. Their marriage was negotiated by Piccolomini, who then arranged the meeting outside the Porta Camollia in Siena, which has been described as “probably the most significant ceremonial event in the history of fifteenth-century Siena.”⁶ A commemorative column was later erected on the site and appears in the depictions of the event even though it was not present when the meeting actually happened.

Differences, both obvious and subtle, between the modello and the painting might be taken as evidence that Raphael cannot have prepared cartoons, as Vasari first suggested, but only studies like the present work. The drawing does not include the view of Siena that would eventually appear in the background, nor the three gangly trees that so strangely occupy the upper half of the fresco— these were clearly invented by Pinturicchio or his workshop, which tended to a compositional horror vacui. Raphael’s foreground figures are worked up in the drawing in pen, ink, and wash over initial sketches in chalk and with a blind stylus, and the background figures are apparently drawn freely. The drawing is notable, however, for the way that the figures’ gentle turns, shifting contrapposti, and interactive gestures tie both individuals and the circular arrangement of groups together. Visible despite the drawing’s damaged state, these qualities are lost in the fresco, where instead the figures tend to stand stock-still and are enveloped by their clothes, with disjointed shifts from the foreground to the middle ground groups. It is precisely this ability to animate compositions with a variety of detail, convincing human interaction, and spatial complexity that would make Raphael so successful a painter in the coming years, first in his series of paintings of the Virgin and child or Holy Family, then in works like the great Entombment of 1507, and eventually in the grand narratives of the Vatican Stanze and tapestry cartoons. Pinturicchio must have recognized these key aspects of Raphael’s genius when he asked the younger master to design the scenes. In the end, the Piccolomini frescoes were for the most part executed fairly quickly after the death of the patron by somewhat uninspired members of Pinturicchio’s workshop, who were unable to preserve the elegant brilliance of Raphael’s sketches.

—JJM

Footnotes:

1. London 2007–8, 252, citing Shepherd 1993.
2. Vasari 1878–85, 3:494.
3. Vasari 1878–85, 4:319.
4. Joannides, in Cleveland and Lille 2002, 22, writes that “there seems to be no earlier case.”
5. In addition to the Morgan drawing, see Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. 520e, a comparable modello for the Journey of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini to Basel; Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. 280e, a study for a Group of Soldiers in the same fresco; and Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, inv. wa1846.154, a metalpoint study of Four Standing Youths for figures in the background of the Coronation of Aeneas Piccolomini as Poet Laureate.
6. London 2007–8, 257.