The Birthplace of Raphael
Raphael Sanzio da Urbino, the Prince of Painters, was born in the city of Urbino, on the 6th of April, 1483.
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From Artist-Biographies: Raphael by M. F. Sweetser, 1880
Raphael Sanzio da Urbino, the Prince of Painters, was born in the city of Urbino, on the 6th of April, 1483. The family of Santi, or Sanzio, was an old and respectable one, which included several artists and ecclesiastics, and had recently moved to Urbino from the outlying castle-hamlet of Colbordolo. The young Giovanni Santi devoted himself to what he called "the admirable art of painting," and in due time became one of the best of the Umbrian artists, nearly equal to Perugino or Pinturicchio. About twenty of his pictures still remain, showing feeble color and rigid outlines, combined with correct drawing and simplicity of conception. Giovanni was also a poet, and wrote a quaint epic of two hundred and twenty-four pages in terze rima, now in the Vatican Library, celebrating the martial deeds of the Duke of Urbino.
The natal city of Raphael stands on a bold cliff over the brawling Metaurus, surrounded by the sharp peaks of the central Apennines, and commanding a distant view of the blue Adriatic. It is now a half-forgotten town of eight thousand inhabitants, "presenting more forcibly the appearance of fallen grandeur than any town in Italy;" and is still remarkable for the extraordinary beauty of its youths. In the fifteenth century it was called "the Italian Athens," and stood preeminent in religion, culture, and chivalry, under the patriarchal government of Federigo da Montefeltro, a valiant general and judicious art-patron.
For fourteen years he kept twenty or thirty copyists at work transcribing Greek and Latin manuscripts on vellum, which were afterwards bound in crimson velvet with silver clasps. On his return from the Papal-Venetian wars, he built the most splendid palace in Italy, beautified the city with gardens and statuary, and surrounded himself with artists and learned men.
Amid these glad activities of the liberal arts Giovanni Santi prospered amain, and soon married Magia Ciarla, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, with whom he lived in rare felicity. To this couple a child was born, to whom Giovanni gave the name of Raphael, as if he foresaw his glorious future, while at the same time he declined to follow the prevalent Italian custom of providing a wet-nurse for him, desiring the mother to nurse the child herself.
The house in which Raphael was born is still reverently preserved as public property, and stands on a steep hillside up which the pack-mules clamber, cat-like, over rugged stone steps. It contains a fresco of the Madonna, painted by Santi, in which the face of the Virgin is a portrait of Magia, and that of the infant Jesus represents the young Raphael. Giovanni and Magia had three other children, all of whom died young; and in 1491 the mother herself died also. Seven months later, Giovanni, feeling that his beloved boy needed a woman's ministrations, married Bernardina di Parte, the goldsmith's daughter, a lady of strong and determined character.
The young child grew up in the hillside home, under the tender care of his mother and the tutelage of his father, who guarded him from all unworthy associations. He spent much time in the studio, and was familiar with the implements and terms of art from his earliest childhood. Several crude Umbrian paintings are claimed by tradition as his juvenile works, but their authenticity is denied by the best authorities. In 1492 Santi frescoed the Tiranni chapel, at Cagli, in his best Mantegnesque manner. At this time the lad was with him, perhaps as a humble assistant, and his portrait is recognized in the sweet face of one of the angels in the fresco.
There is a tradition that Raphael received his first lessons in art from Luca Signorelli or Timoteo della Vite; but Lanzi says that he was instructed by Fra Carnevale, the best painter then in Urbino, whose pictures were certainly carefully studied both by Raphael and Bramante. It is also reported that Venturini, the tutor of Michael Angelo, taught him the Latin language; and that Bramante, Pacciolo, and other members of the galaxy of learned men then at the court of Duke Guidobaldo, assisted in other branches of his education.
Giovanni Santi died in 1494, leaving his widow Bernardina and his brother Don Bartolommeo Santi, a well-to-do ecclesiastic, to act as guardians for his orphaned boy. But Bernardina was a resolute woman, and Bartolommeo was a grasping and officious priest; and they soon became engaged in sharp contentions about the management of the Santi estate. Raphael was neglected amid these domestic turmoils, until his well-beloved uncle Simone Ciarla, appreciating his genius, and deploring his unhappy situation, arranged that he should be sent away to pursue his studies in art. After a careful consideration of the advantages of the schools of Leonardo, Bellini, Mantegna, Francia, and Perugino, it was decided to commit him to the care of the latter. There is a tradition that the painter, after inspecting several of the lad's sketches, exclaimed, "Let him be my pupil: he will soon become my master."
Perugia, where the young student remained for nearly nine years, is one of the most picturesque of the renowned hill-cities of Italy. Its ponderous walls and gray Etruscan bastions crown a high green hill, and are overtopped by a cluster of church towers and domes. The battlements command a magnificent view over the valley of the Tiber and the white cities of Spoleto, Assisi, and Foligno, and along the lofty and austere Apennines, from Radicofani to the cloud-piercing Monte Caltrio. The steep and rocky streets open on paved squares, adorned with ancient sculptured fountains and papal statues, and overlooked by rugged Gothic facades and vast silent churches, rich in mediaeval monuments and Pre-Raphaelite paintings. At a remote period the Etruscan city of Perusia stood here, and was destroyed by Augustus Caesar, who replaced it by a Roman military colony, afterwards the prey of the Goths under Totila.
In the Middle Ages it was seized by the ferocious Baglioni family, who held it for several generations, desolating the Umbrian Campagna by forays from their grim lair. These lion-hearts guarded the city while Raphael dwelt there; and the public squares often ran with noble blood, when the rival Oddi chieftains were cut to pieces by their pitiless foes, and the cathedral was so stained with massacres, that it was washed with wine and reconsecrated. The memories of these terrible conflicts, prolonged through the years of his sojourn, are preserved in certain of Raphael's later paintings.
One of the strangest phenomena of the Middle Ages was the growth and culmination of the Umbrian school of painting in the midst of these scenes of rapine and carnage. Drawing their earliest inspiration from Siena, the Umbrian artists had preserved a quiet and contemplative spirituality of manner, even in the face of the popular Florentine realism, and had developed the expression of ardent religious aspirations and profound devotion.
For centuries the earnest mountaineers had revered the memory of the marvellous St. Francis, "The Seraphic," who was buried among them; and from his sacred mausoleum at Assisi had emanated the mighty influences which were manifested in the solemn tenderness and ecstatic contemplations of myriads of disciples. With the grim austerity of its rugged heights and the sympathetic sweetness of its rich and flowery valleys, the land seemed created for mystery, and was peopled with legends.
Isolated among the glens of the cloudy Apennines and remote from the influences of the history and art of pagan or papal Rome, as well as from the materialistic methods of the commercial cities of the coast, the spirit of the people was reflected by their pietistic artists, who formed what may be called the last group of purely Christian painters. The pictorial flowering of this devout spirit appeared in Bonfigli, Santi, Francia, and Perugino, in pictures whose mechanical defects are counterbalanced by their evidence of religious enthusiasm.
Perugino was born in 1446, at the highland hamlet of Citta della Pieve, and at an early age was carried to Perugia, where he studied art with a local painter. He afterwards entered the Florentine studio of Verocchio, in company of Leonardo, and labored diligently, in painful and abject poverty, until he became the most popular painter of Italy, and Rome and Florence contended for his presence. Although exhibiting more artistic symmetry than the older Umbrian works, his figures are often stiff and ungraceful, and are painted in a hard and dry manner. It has been said that Raphael's Madonnas are beautiful and gracious, but those of Perugino are innocent and saintly.
The history of Perugino has been called "the saddest in the annals of Christain art.” He was an adherent of the noble Savonarola, while laboring in Florence under a rolling fire of hostile criticism; but after the martyrdom of the great reformer, he renounced his faith in God and man. While on his deathbed, in 1524, he refused a confessor, saying, "I wish to see how a soul will fare in that Land, which has not been confessed." Ruskin calls him "a noble, gracious, and quiet laborer, — never weary, never impatient, never untender, never untrue. Not Tintoret in power, not Raphael in flexibility, not Holbein in variety, not Luini in love—their gathered gifts he has in balanced and fruitful measure, fit to be the guide and impulse and father of all."
After settling at Perugia the master painted an immense number of pictures, which are now scattered in all the galleries of Europe, showing the tender earnestness of his renewed earlier style, with marvellous faces and grouping, and back- grounds of fair landscapes and bright skies. He was driven by an inordinate desire for money, and became, as Taine says, a mere saint-manufacturer, accumulating great wealth, and owning numerous houses in Florence and Perugia.
Sweetser, M. F. Artist-Biographies: Raphael. Houghton, Osgood & Company, 1880.
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