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His bio reads like a rock star's. A precocious talent, he never married because, he said, it would have hurt his career. But he moved his girlfriend in with him while he worked his last gig--then died at the age of 37 from a fever brought on, some said, by carnal excess. The great painter Raphael (1483-1520) was one of the big three of Italy's high Renaissance, along with Leonardo da Vinci (whose work he admired and studied closely) and Michelangelo (with whom he carried on a vigorous, if all too brief, competition to be the Vatican's favorite artist). He didn't seem, however, to have a superstar's attitude. The pope was his patron, and acquaintances described him as "sensible," "well mannered," "genial" and "sweet." On his deathbed, he bequeathed his mistress enough money to live "honorably" for the rest of her life. And he painted her portrait--one of the great paintings of all time, right up there with the "Mona Lisa"--as a final, loving tribute.
At least that's how the legend goes. That portrait--which is touring the United States for the first time--constitutes a one-picture exhibition at the Frick Collection in New York through Jan. 30 (it will travel to Houston and Indianapolis). Certainly, "La Fornarina" ("baker's daughter") comes from the hand of the incomparable Raphael. The gently tilting composition is perfect, the color finely balanced and the lady's skin alabaster and flawless. (Raphael got so good with the then new medium of oil paint that his technique became known as sprezzatura, meaning, roughly, to hide with technical facility exactly how anything is done.) In the classic Venus gesture of simultaneously trying to cover up and to showcase her erotic attributes (including a belly button under gauze), she glances coyly to the side at, one presumes, a lover. "La Fornarina," the renowned art historian and MacArthur fellow Leo Steinberg explains, "is the closest thing to soft porn in the high Renaissance." But whether the seminude lady depicted is actually the baker's daughter who was Raphael's love remains a mystery.
Is Raphael himself the object of her gaze? Most people--including several British critics reviewing the big Raphael exhibition currently at the National Gallery in London--like to think so. Since live women models weren't generally available five centuries ago, the reasoning goes, the lady's posing undressed for Raphael must have been an intimate act. Besides, what else can the artist's proprietary name on her armband mean? But the experts remain divided. With a fine disregard for attendance-boosting hype, Rome museums commissioner Claudio Strinati ("La Fornarina" usually resides at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome) lays out a less titillating hypothesis in a booklet accompanying the Frick display.
A recent cleaning of the painting reveals a wedding ring on the lady's left hand; Raphael's final and most prominent patron, the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi, had just been married to one Francesca Ardeasca. Raphael's name on the armband, Strinati says, is a tribute to Chigi. He concludes that " |
