Raphael

Portrait of a Young Woman (La Fornarina), 1520
Image from the Galleria Barberini website

"Remember that Raphael's genius wore out that divinest painter before half his life was lived. Since you feel his influence powerfully enough to reproduce hi miracles so well, it will assuredly consume you like a flame." (334)

Restored Image of La Fornarina from the Frick Gallery 2004
*note the detail of the background as compared to the image above

"And who can trust the religious sentiment of Raphael, or recieve any of his Virgins as Heaven-descended likenesses, after seeing, for example, the Fornarina of the Barberini palace, and feeling how sensual the artist must have been, to paint such a brazen trollop of his own accord, and lovingly!" (337)

Madonna of Foligno, 1511-12

"Some fine morning, I shall come to the Pinacotheca of the Vatican... and what shall I behold? A heap of white ashes on the marble floor, just in front of the divine Raphael's picture of the Madonna di Foligno!" (334)

"We see Cherubs, by Raphael, whose baby-innocence could only have been nursed in Paradise; Angels, by Raphael, as innocent as they, but whose serene intelligence embraces both earthly and celestial things Madonnas, by Raphael, on whose lips he has impressed a holy and delicate reserve, implying sanctity on earth, and into whose soft eyes he has thrown a light which he never could have imagined, except by raising his own eyes with a pure aspiration heavenward." (338)

We will explain these quotations from The Marble Faun and how the paintings were received at the time.

-Brian and Catherine