Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Raphael
Italian; 16th-century
New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art
93%
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints. c1504. Oil and gold on wood
Raphael's greatness lies in his ability to paint perfect order in a way that, despite its logical exactitude, nevertheless seems suffused with the contingent and the mutable — with life. In the main panel of this altarpiece, Mary is a chiasmus that centers the image. Her lap moves off in one direction, her glance and hand and shoulders point the other way. Everything about the picture outside her is a vibration of this structuring principle she sets off; she governs all relations without, however, constricting the freedom with which any one figure moves about. The top left and bottom right Saints tilt their heads inward, top right and bottom left gaze off the face of the picture. There's a zigzag that starts at the yellow-robed figure's feet and works up through his book to the halo of the woman above him; it's echoed by a similar form cooked up between the figures at right. These two structures are then yoked by the diagonal comprising baby John and the Christ Child. Despite all this complex relational activity going on to either side of (and not always involving) the Virgin, there are all these little features within the arrangement — books, quills, crooks of fingers — that shoot it all back in towards Mary, who in turns casts it all back outwards again through the jut of her knee and her downcast glance, and so on. The staid verticality of the throne she's sitting on serves both to anchor the picture's pingponging affinities of form (the red-and-gold pattern behind Mary is indeed chiasmic) but also, ultimately, to extend them upwards into the lunette, where God and his attendants are likewise an unresolving criss-cross of looks and gestures. (TFS, 2026)
Vienna, Austria: Kunsthistorisches Museum
93%
The Madonna of the Meadow. 1505. Oil on canvas
That famous pyramid that's formed by the Virgin and the two holy kids is as still, secure, and perfectly achieved as anything in art's history... yet there's not a single solid form within it (except maybe the baby baptist's staff) that can be said to be providing that solidity. The boys are offset from Mary such that, from the tip of John's stick up to her visage, a slight recession in space is sustained; the hems of Mary's robe suggest, from the other side of the structure, a cascade of cylinders up her leg toward her head where her glance meets the crucifix. Mary twists, Christ countertwists, John countercountertwists. Ceaseless motion, yet serene. In its particulars Raphael's painting is all delicacy and blending hues but in general it's as certain — singular, sufficient — as whatever comes into your head when you think "triangle," and that is its brilliance: it's at once an ideal and the actuality of life being lived. (TFS, 2025)
New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art
80%
The Madonna of the Meadow. 1505. Oil on canvas
This was once a predella for Raphael's Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints, which lives nearby it in the Renaissance galleries at the Met. To consider it as a discrete artwork is a little dubious, but we're forced to do so given its removal from below the Madonna. It's interesting to see Raphael operating underneath perfection, which isn't to say that this painting is a failure but rather that, as a subordinate component of a larger artwork, its demands were specific and different from those of the altarpiece's main panel. The handling is less controlled — especially in the grass up front — and the figures lack some articulation. One prefers Raphael more honed than this, but the fact that Agony doesn't fall on its face suggests that there's something about his style in general which the precision and the finish of his major artworks tends to obscure or even displace: there's a breadth to this painting — an openness and a refusal fully to lock into place, despite the schematic rendering of the figures — that is lacking in Raphael at his more grand. (TFS, 2026)