In the five hundredth anniversary of Raffaello Sanzio[2] of Urbino.

  

Original painting by Stefano Frassetto[3].

 

 

Vasari[4] says that Giovanni de’ Santi, Raffaello’s father, was so happy for the birth of his son that he didn’t want send him to nurse, and “let his mother breastfeed him”, while “by all the good and excellent manners possible at the time” the child was immediately initiated and trained to painting in his father’s workshop at Urbino : as soon as in age, his father introduced him in Perugia to the workshop of Pietro Perugino who accepted the child in apprenticeship, and where Raffaello stood out for how he studied Pietro’s manner, also imitating him to the point that it was not easy to distinguish the work of the pupil from that of the master.

Thanks to his fine manners that very few of his predecessors demonstrated, Raffaello soon obtained high-ranking orders, first in Siena – where Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo already were working – then in Florence where he begun to teach ‘Perspective’ in which he was excellent indeed and that especially interested him, since maybe town planning and architecture were the real novelties to the Renaissance artist, no longer just a decorator or poet but philosopher and theorist in all respects[5].  

He met and appreciated Albrecht Dürer[6] from whom he had a few engravings done on his own drawing.

Little is said about Raffaello’ special talent and sensuality of love, which Vasari indicates in his portraying human features : so that, for example “La Velata” (1516) and “La Fornarina” (about 1519), which even are inspired by “Amor sacro e Amor profano” (1515) of his contemporary Tiziano Vecellio, are not indeed didactic and tedious pedagogical portraits, unlike the other.

He came back to Perugia, where he was a guest of the Duke of Montefeltro, then again to Florence where new orders called him, and finally to Rome in 1508, where the Pope Julius II – who had ordered the demolition of the Vatican basilica dating back to the emperor Constantine due to the barbarian Middle Age contaminations – commissioned to Raffaello a series of frescoes for the new Library and Ecclesiastic Court in the ‘Stanza della Segnatura’ of the ‘Palazzi Apostolici’, where theology was peak and balance of human philosophies.

In the meanwhile Raffaello, who already had set up – unlike Michelangelo - a profitful workshop with talented collaborators, came to meet the expectations of his client, without neglecting just a little ironic look about what he was painting : that encyclopedic figurative work to which he seems having been accompanied step by step by cultured papal officials.

And so, his “School of Athens” opens to the viewer a heterogeneous disorder with the everlasting discussion in the centre between Plato, the real leading character of the fresco pointing to Heaven of Ideas, and his pupil Aristotle offering his “Ethics” to human processing. All around them a number of recognizable characters, portrayed in realistic guises of fellow artists and contemporaries of Raffaello : Socrates - Plato’s teacher -, Pythagoras with the perfection of the number, the Berber Averroes, Euclid, Heraclitus, Zoroaster, Diogenes to name a few.

None of them looks at the viewer, each one is taken by his own ‘good’ theory, arguing and supporting it , when possible, with loyal disciples. And although the timeless Heaven which lights up the scene, gives no indication of the time, the date indicates 1503 October 31, the day of the election of Giuliano della Rovere to the papal throne with the name of Giulio III.

Here is finally represented the grandeur and the harmony of Architecture, that at the same time receives, supports and introduces, to the audience and to the History, both motion and features of philosophers and scientists.

Does so an Order precede, accept the human disorder and, while making it clear and unpleasant, is also able to raise it offering space and listening?

Raffaello seems to share what his client thinks, however he gives the only woman in the fresco – Ipazia, with good reason, the Alexandrian mathematician who here wears a white sheer dress and looks incredibly like Raffaello himself, also portrayed on the opposite and symmetric side – that precise gaze which seeks the viewer and asks a judgement, a feedback and an aswer, so making itself an indispensable link of imputation for benefit and wealth.

 

 

                                         Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – September 12, 2020 

 

 

 

[1] “Everything in its place” is the title of an essay by Oliver Sacks, published posthumously, where the neurologist points out the pathological aspect of melancholy and compulsion, for which an indispensable condition is that ‘everything is in its place’, even at the cost of tampering with reality at one’s fixation. On the other hand Sacks indicates in ‘one’s putting order’ the quality of patients who come to heal, as they make themselves able to ‘put order’ starting from a mental disorder which is present in any pathology.

 

[2] In 2020 occurs the five hundredth anniversary of Raffaello Sanzio death whom Giorgio Vasari remembers in “Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri” ‘Nell’edizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze 1550’ (Einaudi ‘ET Classici’ 2015, Vol.II p.611 e p.639).“Nacque Rafaello in Urbino città notissima l’anno MCCCCLXXXIII (1483 - ndr), in Venerdì Santo a ore tre di notte… Poi confesso e contrito finì il corso della sua vita il giorno medesimo ch’e’ nacque, che fu il Venerdì Santo d’anni XXXVII (37anni, quindi era il 1520 – ndr)…” 

 

[3] Stefano Frassetto is born in Turin in 1968. After his degree in Architecture at ‘Politecnico’ he begun as graphic novelist for local magazines. In the ‘90s he edited in France, on ‘Le Réverbère’ and on ‘Libération’ : then he created ‘Ippo’ for ‘Il Giornalino’ and then the stripe ‘35MQ’ for the swiss magazine ‘20 Minuti’. In 2000 he came into ‘La Stampa’ newspaper as portraitist for cultural page and the insert ‘Tuttolibri’, then for the weekly ‘Origami’. Today he works also for the swiss magazine ‘Le Temps’. In 2022 Frassetto published his first comic review ‘35MQ : 2012/2022 Dieci anni di inettitudine’.

 

[4] “Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri”, Giorgio Vasari ‘Nell’edizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze 1550’ - Einaudi ‘ET Classici’ 2015, Vol.II pg.611

 

[5] Leon Battista Alberti published “De pictura” (1435) ed il “De re aedificatoria” (1485), the first theoretical treatises about painting, engraving, architecture.

 

[6] “Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri”, Giorgio Vasari ‘Nell’edizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze 1550’ - Einaudi ‘ET Classici’ 2015, Vol.II pg.629