Transfiguration (Raphael)

Painting by Raphael

After the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1815, envoys to Pope Pius VII, Antonio Canova and Marino Marini managed to secure The Transfiguration (along with 66 other pictures) as part of the Treaty of Paris. By agreement with the Congress of Vienna, the works were to be exhibited to the public. The original gallery was in the Borgia Apartment in the Apostolic Palace. After several moves within the Vatican, the painting now resides in the Pinacoteca Vaticana.

The reception of the painting is well documented. Between the year 1525 and 1935, at least 229 written sources can be identified that describe, analyse, praise or criticise The Transfiguration. The first descriptions of the painting after Raphael's death in 1520 called The Transfiguration already a masterpiece, but this status evolved until the end of the 16th century. In his notes of a travel to Rome in 1577, the Spanish humanist Pablo de Céspedes called it the most famous oil painting in the world for the first time. The painting would preserve this authority for more than 300 years. It was acknowledged and repeated by many authors, like the connoisseur François Raguenet, who analysed Raphael's composition in 1701. In his opinion, its outline drawing, the effect of light, the colours and the arrangement of the figures made The Transfiguration the most perfect painting in the world. Jonathan Richardson Senior and Junior dared to criticise the overwhelming status of The Transfiguration, asking if this painting could really be the most famous painting in the world. They criticised that the composition was divided into an upper and a lower half that would not correspond to each other. Also the lower half would draw too much attention instead of the upper half, while the full attention of the viewer should be paid to the figure of Christ alone. This criticism did not diminish the fame of the painting, but provoked counter criticism by other connoisseurs and scholars. For the German speaking world, it was the assessment by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that prevailed. He interpreted the upper and the lower half as complementary parts. This assessment was quoted by many authors and scholars during the 19th century and thus the authority of Goethe helped to save the fame of The Transfiguration. During the short period of time the painting spent in Paris, it became a major attraction to visitors, and this continued after its return to Rome, then placed in the Vatican museums. Mark Twain was one of many visitors and he wrote in 1869: "I shall remember The Transfiguration partly because it was placed in a room almost by itself; partly because it is acknowledged by all to be the first oil painting in the world; and partly because it was wonderfully beautiful." In the early 20th century, the fame of the painting rapidly diminished and soon The Transfiguration lost its denomination as the most famous painting in the world. A new generation of artists did not accept Raphael as an artistic authority anymore. Copies and reproductions were no longer in high demand. While the complexity of the composition had been an argument to praise the painting until the end of the 19th century, viewers were now repelled by it. The painting was felt to be too crowded, the figures to be too dramatic and the whole setting to be too artificial. In contrast, other paintings like the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci were much easier to recognise and did not suffer from the decline of the overwhelming status of Raphael as an artistic example. Thus The Transfiguration is a good example for the changeability of the fame of an artwork, that may last for centuries but may also decline in just a short period.

The fame of the painting is also based on its reproduction. While the original could only be admired in one place – in Rome, and for a short period of time in Paris after it had been taken away by Napoleon – the large number of reproductions ensured that the composition of the painting was omnipresent in nearly every important art collection in Europe. It could thus be studied and admired by many collectors, connoisseurs, artists and art historians. Including the mosaic in St Peter's in the Vatican, at least 68 copies were made between 1523 and 1913. At least 52 engravings and etchings were produced after the painting until the end of the 19th century, including illustrations for books like biographies and even for Christian songbooks. At least 32 etchings and engravings can be traced that depict details of the painting, sometimes to use them as a part of a new composition. The show went on to tour university art galleries at Cornell, Columbia, Yale, Temple, and the University of California, Berkeley, among others.

Raphael's painting depicts two consecutive, but distinct, biblical narratives from the Gospel of Matthew, also related in the Gospel of Mark. In the first, the Transfiguration of Christ itself, Moses and Elijah appear before the transfigured Christ with Peter, James and John looking on (Matthew 17:1–9; Mark 9:2–13). In the second, the Apostles fail to cure a boy from demons and await the return of Christ (Matthew 17:14–21; Mark 9:14). The upper register of the painting shows the Transfiguration itself (on Mount Tabor, according to tradition), with the transfigured Christ floating in front of illuminated clouds, between the prophets Moses, on the right, and Elijah, on the left, with whom he is conversing (Matthew 17:3). The two figures kneeling on the left are commonly identified as Justus and Pastor who shared August 6 as a feast day with the Feast of the Transfiguration. These saints were the patrons of Medici's archbishopric and the cathedral for which the painting was intended. traditionally read as symbols of faith, hope and love; hence the symbolic colours of blue yellow, green and red for their robes. The man at lower left is the apostle evangelist Matthew (some would say St. Andrew),|source=

Matthew (or Andrew) gestures to the viewer to wait, his gaze focused on a kneeling woman in the lower foreground. She is ostensibly a part of the family group,

The iconography of the picture has been interpreted as a reference to the delivery of the city of Narbonne from the repeated assaults of the Saracens. Pope Calixtus III proclaimed August 6 a feast day on the occasion of the victory of the Christians in 1456. J. M. W. Turner had seen The Transfiguration in the Louvre, in 1802. At the conclusion of the version of his first lecture, delivered on 7 January 1811, as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Turner demonstrated how the upper part of the composition is made up of intersecting triangles, forming a pyramid with Christ at the top. In a 1870 publication, German art historian Car Justi observes that the painting depicts two subsequent episodes in the biblical narrative of Christ: after the transfiguration, Jesus encounters a man who begs mercy for his devil possessed son. Raphael plays on a tradition equating epilepsy with the aquatic moon (luna, from whence lunatic). This causal link is played on by the watery reflection of the moon in the lower left corner of the painting; the boy is literally moonstruck. The link between the phase of the moon and epilepsy would only be broken scientifically in 1854 by Jacques Joseph Moreau de Tours. Raphael's Transfiguration can be considered a prefiguration of both Mannerism, as evidenced by the stylised, contorted poses of the figures at the bottom of the picture; and of Baroque painting, as evidenced by the dramatic tension imbued within those figures, and the strong use of chiaroscuro throughout. As a reflection on the artist, Raphael likely viewed The Transfiguration as his triumph. Raphael uses the contrast of Jesus presiding over men to satiate his papal commissioners in the Roman Catholic Church. Raphael uses the cave to symbolize the Renaissance style, easily observed in the extended index finger as a reference to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Additionally, he subtly incorporates a landscape in the background, but uses darker coloring to show his disdain for the style. Yet the focal point for the viewer is the Baroque styled child and his guarding father. In all, Raphael successfully appeased his commissioners, paid homage to his predecessors, and ushered in the subsequent predominance of Baroque painting. On the simplest level, the painting can be interpreted as depicting a dichotomy: the redemptive power of Christ, as symbolised by the purity and symmetry of the top half of the painting; contrasted with the flaws of Man, as symbolised by the dark, chaotic scenes in the bottom half of the painting. The philosopher Nietzsche interpreted the painting in his book The Birth of Tragedy as an image of the interdependence of Apollonian and Dionysian principles. The sixteenth century painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects that The Transfiguration was Raphael's "most beautiful and most divine" work.

Fragments of the Transfiguration appear on the cover of the Renaissance: Desire album mixed by Dave Seaman in 2001 and published by Ultra Records.