by Grant Allen
Look first at the St. George. The subject here is the Combat with the Dragon; and Raphael, in representing it, has strictly followed the conventional arrangement of earlier painters. No earlier picture for comparison with his treatment exists in this Gallery, though there are plenty elsewhere: but if you will look downstairs at the majolica relief of the same subject in the Della Robbia Room of the Renaissance Sculpture Gallery, you will see how closely Raphael’s work corresponds with earlier representations of the same pretty myth. As you will now have learned, there is always a regular way to envisage every stock subject: whoever produced a Combat of St. George with the Dragon was compelled by custom and the expectations of his patron to include these various elements — a St. George in armour, on horseback, the horse usually white, as here: a wounded dragon, most often to the right: the Princess running away in terror in the distance, or at least crouching abjectly. There is a Tintoretto of this subject, indeed, in the National Gallery, where some critics have blamed the great Venetian painter for making the Princess look away in terror, instead of turning with gratitude to thank her brave preserver. But the conventional representation demanded that the Princess should flee or cower: people were accustomed to that treatment of the theme, and expected always to see it repeated. It was their notion of a St. George. We must set down a great deal in early art to this sense of expectation on the part of patrons. Tintoretto, who came much later than Raphael, after the mighty Renaissance painters had accustomed the world to put up with, or even to look for, novelty of composition, often ventured very largely to depart from traditional motives. In his picture, therefore, the Princess occupies the foreground — a most revolutionary proceeding — while the action itself is relegated somewhat to the middle distance. But if you compare the three representations of this scene to be found in the Louvre — this picture and the two reliefs by Della Robbia and Michel Colombe respectively — you will see that the Princess in earlier times is always represented quite small in the distance, and is usually running away, or at best kneeling with clasped hands in abject terror.
In the Raphael, the dragon is already wounded: but he has broken the saint’s lance, with part of which he is transfixed, while the remainder lies in fragments on the ground behind him. St. George on his prancing steed is drawing his sword to finish off the monster. In the Michel Colombe, on the other hand (downstairs in the French Renaissance Sculpture), the dragon is biting at the lance, which explains why it is broken here, and also why the St. George in Mantegna’s Madonna holds a broken shaft as his emblem or symbol. Observe, however, that while the French sculptor, with questionable taste, makes the dragon occupy the larger part of the field, so as somewhat to dwarf St. George and his steed, the Italian sculptor, and still more the Italian painter, have shewn greater tact in treating the dragon as a comparative accessory, and concentrating attention upon the militant saint, combating with spiritual arms the evil demon. In this picture, as Mrs. Jameson well observes, the conception is on the whole serenely allegorical and religious in spirit. But Raphael himself painted a second St. George, at a later date, for the Duke of Urbino to present to Henry VII of England. In this other picture, which is now in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, St. George is treated rather as the patron saint of England than as the Champion of Right — to mark which fact he wears the Order of the Garter round his knee, with its familiar motto. As Champion of England, he is rushing on the monster with fiery energy: the picture is in this case more military than spiritual. The moment chosen is the one where he is just transfixing the dragon with his lance: the rescued Princess is here again in the background.
Note once more that these various works are pictures of the combat of St. George with the Dragon. In devotional pictures of the Madonna, St. George frequently stands by Our Lady’s side, in accordance with the wishes of the particular donor, as patron saint of that person himself, or of his town or family. In Venetian pictures, as we have seen, he is very frequent, being one of the patron saints of Venice, and more particularly of the Venetian army and the conquered territory. You will find it interesting, after you have finished the examination of the two Raphaels, to go round the devotional Italian pictures in the Salle des Primitifs, the Long Gallery, and the Salon Carré, in order to note his various appearances. He is usually marked by his lance and his armour: the absence of wings (a point not always noticed by beginners) will enable you at once to discriminate him from St. Michael — as man from angel. The more you learn to look out for such recurrences of saints, and to account for the reasons for their appearance, the more will you understand and enjoy picture galleries, and the more will you throw yourself into the devotional mediæval atmosphere which produced such pictures.
Now turn to the second little Raphael. This represents the closely cognate subject of St. Michael and the Dragon — the angelic as opposed to the human counterpart. The two ideas are at bottom identical — the power of good overcoming evil; the true faith combating heathendom. It is a world-wide myth, occurring in many forms — as Horus and Typhon, as Perseus, as Bellerophon. Hence Michael and George, the superhuman and the human soldier of right, often balance one another, as in these two pictures: you have seen them doing so already in the Madonna della Vittoria: look out for them elsewhere in this conjunction. Both are knights; both are in armour; but one is a man and the other an angel. In this second little picture, St. Michael is seen, clad in his usual gorgeous mail, treading on the neck of the dragon and menacing it with his sword. The dark and lurid landscape in the background contains many fearful forms of uncertain monsters: condemned souls are plagued in it by demons, while a flaming town flares murkily towards heaven in the far distance, the details being taken, as in many such works, from Dante’s Inferno. Or rather, they and the Inferno represent the same old traditional view of Hades. (The figures weighed down with leaden cowls are the hypocrites, while the thieves are tormented by a plague of serpents.) Close comparison of these two little works will give you a good idea of Raphael’s earliest Urbino manner. This fantastic picture, however, though full of imagination, is by no means so pleasing as the dainty St. George beside it.
Go straight from this combat to the Great St. Michael, also by Raphael, in the Salon Carré. It bears date 1518. Pope Leo X commissioned Raphael to paint this picture as a present for François Ier: the painter — to whom he left the choice of subject — chose St. Michael, the military patron of France, and of the Order of which the king was Grand Master. (You will find a bronze bust of François, wearing the collar and pendant of St. Michael, in the Renaissance Sculpture.) He chose it also, no doubt, because it enabled him to show his increased mastery over life and action. This great and noble picture, one of the finest as regards dramatic rapidity ever painted by Raphael, is celebrated for the instantaneous effect of its movement. (Compare the demoniac boy in the Transfiguration at the Vatican.) The warrior archangel has just swooped down through the air, and, hovering on poised wings, is caught in the very act of setting one foot lightly on the demon’s shoulder. The dragon, writhing, tries in vain to lift his head and turn on his conqueror. The noble serenity of the archangel’s face, the perfect grace of his form and attitude, the brilliant panoply of his celestial armour, the sheen of his wings, the light tresses of his hair floating outward behind him (as of one who has traversed space on wings of lightning) cannot fail to be remarked by every spectator. This is Raphael in the fulness of his knowledge and power, yet far less interesting to the lover of sacred art than the boy Raphael of Urbino, the dreamy Raphael of the Sposalizio at Milan, the tender Raphael of the Gran Duca at Florence, or of the Belle Jardinière in this same apartment. Notice that with the progress of Renaissance feeling the demon is now no longer a dragon but a half-human figure, with horns and serpent tail, and swarthy red in colour. He is so foreshortened as not to take up any large space in the composition, which is mainly filled by the victorious figure of the triumphant archangel. The more classical armour bespeaks the High Renaissance. The longer you compare these two
extreme phases of Raphael’s art, the more will you note points of advance between them — technical advance, counterbalanced by moral and spiritual retrogression.
End by comparing this St. Michael with Mantegna’s, and with the playful Leonardesque archangel in the Vierge aux balances, the last point in the degeneracy of a celestial conception.
Raphael is one of the painters who can best be studied at the Louvre, with comparatively little need for aid from elsewhere.
Pay a special visit to the Louvre one day in order to make a detailed study of Madonnas. Before doing so, however, read and digest the following general statement of principles on the subject.
[People who have not thrown themselves, or thought themselves, or read themselves into the mental attitude of early art, often complain that Italian picture galleries, and museums like Cluny, are too full of merely sacred subjects. But when once you have learnt to understand and appreciate them, to know the meaning which lurks in every part, you will no longer make this causeless complaint. As well object to Greek art that it represents little save the personages of Greek mythology. As a matter of fact, though the Louvre contains a fair number of Madonnas, it does not embrace a sufficient number to give a perfectly clear conception of the varieties of type and the development of the subject — not so good a series in many respects as the National Gallery, though it is particularly well adapted for the study of certain special groups, particularly the Leonardesque-Lombard development.
The simplest type of Madonna is that where Our Lady appears alone with the Divine Infant. This modification of the subject most often occurs as a half-length, though sometimes the Blessed Virgin is so represented in full length, enthroned, or under a canopy. Several such simple Madonnas occur in the Gallery. In the earliest examples here, however, such as Cimabue’s, and the cognate altar-piece of the School of Giotto, the Madonna is seen surrounded by angelic supporters. This forms a second group — Our Lady with Angels. Very early examples of this treatment show the angels in complete isolation, as a sort of framework. (See several parallels in sculpture in Room VI, ground floor, at Cluny.) Grouping as yet is non-existent. No specimen of this very original type is to be found in the Louvre; but in the Cimabue of this Gallery the angels are superimposed, so to speak, while in the Giottesque example close by an elementary attempt is made at grouping them. In later works, the angels are more and more naturally represented, from age to age, singly or in pairs, or else grouped irregularly on either side of Our Lady. You will note for yourself that as the Renaissance developes, the nature of the grouping, both of angels and saints, deviates more and more from the early strict architectural symmetry.
A slight variant on the simple pictures of the Madonna and Child are those, of Florentine origin, in which the infant St. John Baptist, the patron Saint of the City of Florence, is introduced at play with the childish Saviour. This class — the Madonna and Child, with St. John — is well represented in the Belle Jardinière, and several other pictures in the Louvre.
Most often, however, the Madonna is seen enthroned, in the centre of the altar-piece or composition, and surrounded by one, two, or three pairs of saintly personages. The Madonna with Saints thus forms a separate group of subjects. These saints, you will by this time have gathered, are never arbitrarily introduced. They were selected and commissioned, as a rule, by the purchaser, and they are there for a good and sufficient reason. Often the donor desired to pay his devotion in this fashion to his own personal patron; often to the patron of his town or village, of the church in which the picture was to be deposited, or of his family or relations. Frequently, again, the picture was a votive offering, as against plague or other dreaded calamity: in which case it is apt to contain figures of the great plague saints, Roch and Sebastian. Ignorant people often object that such sets of saints are not contemporary. They forget that this is the Enthroned Madonna, and that the action takes place in the Celestial City, where the saints surround the throne of Our Lady.
As regards grouping, in the earlier altar-pieces the selected saints were treated in complete isolation. Most often the Madonna and Child occupy in such cases a central panel, under its own canopy; while the saints are each enclosed in a separate little alcove or gilded tabernacle. Reminiscences of this usage linger long in Italy. Later on, as art progressed, painters began to feel the stiffness of such an arrangement: they placed the attendant saints at first in regularly disposed pairs on either side the throne, and afterwards in something approaching a set composition. With the High Renaissance, the various figures, instead of occupying mere posts round the seat of Our Lady, and gazing at her in adoration, began to indulge in conversation with one another, or to take part in some more or less animated and natural action. This method of arrangement, which culminates for the Florentine school in Fra Bartolommeo, degenerates with the Decadence into confused and muddled groups, with scarcely a trace of symbols — groups of well-draped models, in which it is impossible to see any sacred significance. The Florentine painters preferred, as a rule, such rather complex grouping: the Venetians, influenced in great part by the severer taste of Giorgione and of Titian, usually show a more simple arrangement.
Any one of these various types of Madonna may also be modified by the introduction of a kneeling donor. Thus, Van Eyck’s glowing picture of the Chancellor Rollin adoring Our Lady is an example of the simple Madonna and Child, enthroned, accompanied by the donor; though in this case, the composition is further slightly enriched by the dainty little floating angel in the background, who places an exquisitely jewelled crown of the finest Flemish workmanship on the head of the Virgin. The Madonna della Vittoria, again, which we have so fully considered, is essentially a Madonna and Saints, with the kneeling donor. In very early pictures, you will observe that the donors are often painted grotesquely small, while Our Lady and the Saints are of relatively superhuman stature, to mark their superiority as heavenly personages. In later works, this absurdity dies out, and the figure and face of the donor become one of the recognised excuses for early portrait painting. Indeed, portraiture took its rise for the modern world from such kneeling figures.
Another point of view from which it is interesting to compare these various Madonnas is that of the Nationality or School of Art to which they belong. The early Italian representations of Our Lady are usually more or less girlish in appearance, refined in features, and comparatively simple in dress and decoration. The Flemish type is peculiarly insipid, one might often say, even with great artists, inane and meaningless; in the hands of minor painters, it becomes positively wooden. The face here is long and rather thin; the features peaky. The Madonna of Flemish art, indeed, like the Christ of all art, is a sacred type which is seldom varied. Early French Madonnas, once more, are regal and ladylike, sometimes even courtly. They wear crowns as queens, and are better observed in the Louvre in sculpture than in painting. This Gallery hardly suffices to note in full the peculiarities of the sub-types in various Italian schools; but they may still be recognised. Of these, the Florentine are spiritual, delicate, and strongly ideal; the Lombard, intellectual, like well-read ladies; the Venetian, stately and matronly oligarchical mothers, degenerating later into the mere aristocratic nobility, soulless and materialised, of Titian and his followers. The Umbrians and Sienese are distinguished for the most part by their pure and saintly air of fervent piety.
Do not confound with any of these devotional Madonnas, with or without select groups of saints, various other classes of picture which somewhat resemble them. Each of these has in early art its own proper convention and treatment: it was a recognised species. A Holy Family, for example, consists, as a rule, of a Madonna, the Infant Christ, St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and the child Baptist. Like the other subjects, it is sometimes complicated by the addition of selected Saints as spectators or assessors. A Coronation of the Virgin, again, is an entirely celestial scene, taking place in the calm of the heavenly regions. The Madonna is usually crowned by her Son, but sometimes by angels or by the Eternal
Father. (Several interesting examples of this, for comparison, occur in Room VI, ground floor, at Cluny.) Nativities, of course, belong rather to the group of pictorial histories, such as the Life of Christ, or the Seven Joys of Mary. The sculptures in the ambulatory at Notre-Dame give one a good idea of such continuous histories.
One interesting set of Madonnas, largely exemplified here, to take a particular example, is the later Lombard type of the School of Leonardo. This type, well distinguished by its regular oval features, its gentle smile of inner happiness, and its peculiar waving hair with wisps over the shoulders, is usually regarded as essentially belonging to Leonardo himself and his immediate followers. It is foreshadowed, however, by Foppa, Borgognone, and other early Lombard painters, specimens of whom are not numerous in the Louvre. Leonardo, when he came to Milan to Ludovico Sforza, adopted this local type, which he transfused with Florentine grace and with his own peculiar subdued smile, as one sees it already in the Mona Lisa. From Leonardo, again, it was taken, with more or less success, by his immediate pupils, Beltraffio, Solario, Cesare di Sesto, and others, as well as by Luini, who was not a pupil of Leonardo himself, but who was deeply influenced by the master’s methods and his works in Milan. The number of these Leonardesque Madonnas in the Louvre is exceptionally great, while Leonardo himself can here be better estimated than in Italy. Nowhere else perhaps, save possibly at Milan, can this type as a whole be compared by the student to so great advantage.
While the Madonna herself usually occupies the central panel of votive pictures, it sometimes happens that some other saint is, on his own altar-piece, similarly enthroned; and in that case he is flanked by brother saints, often more important in themselves, but then and there subordinated to him. This special honour under special circumstances is well seen in the case of the St. Lawrence at the far end of the Salle des Primitifs. Particular local saints often thus receive what might otherwise appear undue recognition. For the same reason, minor saints in the group surrounding a Madonna often obtain local brevet-rank (if I may be allowed the simile) over others of far greater general dignity, which they could not lay claim to in any other connection. Thus, in the Nativity by Giulio Romano, to which I called attention in connection with Mantegna’s Madonna, St. Longinus (with his crystal vase) stood on Our Lady’s R, while St. John was relegated to her L — a subordination of the greater to the lesser saint which would only be possible in a chapel actually dedicated to St. Longinus, and where he receives peculiar honour. I now propose to escort you round a few rooms of the Louvre, again calling attention very briefly, from this point of view, to certain special Madonna features only.]
