Editing Raphael (section)

==Critical reception==
[[File:RAFAEL - Madonna Sixtina (Gemäldegalerie Alter Meister, Dresde, 1513-14. Óleo sobre lienzo, 265 x 196 cm).jpg|thumb|left|''[[Sistine Madonna]]'' (1512)]]
Raphael was highly admired by his contemporaries, although his influence on artistic style in his own century was less than that of Michelangelo. [[Mannerism]], beginning at the time of his death, and later the [[Baroque]], took art "in a direction totally opposed" to Raphael's qualities;<ref>[[André Chastel|Chastel André]], ''Italian Art'', p. 230, 1963, Faber</ref> "with Raphael's death, classic art—the High Renaissance—subsided", as [[Walter Friedländer]] put it.<ref>Walter Friedländer, ''Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting'', p. 42 (Schocken 1970 edn.), 1957, Columbia UP</ref> He was soon seen as the ideal model by those disliking the excesses of Mannerism:<blockquote>the opinion ...was generally held in the middle of the sixteenth century that Raphael was the ideal balanced painter, universal in his talent, satisfying all the absolute standards, and obeying all the rules which were supposed to govern the arts, whereas Michelangelo was the eccentric genius, more brilliant than any other artists in his particular field, the drawing of the male nude, but unbalanced and lacking in certain qualities, such as grace and restraint, essential to the great artist. Those, like [[Lodovico Dolce|Dolce]] and [[Pietro Aretino|Aretino]], who held this view were usually the survivors of [[Renaissance Humanism]], unable to follow Michelangelo as he moved on into Mannerism.<ref>Blunt:76</ref></blockquote> Vasari himself, despite his hero remaining Michelangelo, came to see his influence as harmful in some ways, and added passages to the second edition of the ''[[Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects|Lives]]'' expressing similar views.<ref>See Jones & Penny:102–04</ref>
[[File:Pantheon-raphaels-tomb.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Raphael and Maria Bibbiena's tomb in the [[Pantheon, Rome|Pantheon]]. The Madonna is by [[Lorenzetto]].]]
[[File:Raphael's grave, Pantheon 2010.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Raphael's sarcophagus]]

Raphael's compositions were always admired and studied, and became the cornerstone of the [[Academic art|training of the Academies of art]]. His period of greatest influence was from the late 17th to late 19th centuries, when his perfect decorum and balance were greatly admired. He was seen as the best model for the [[history painting]], regarded as the highest in the [[hierarchy of genres]]. Sir [[Joshua Reynolds]] in his ''Discourses'' praised his "simple, grave, and majestic dignity" and said he "stands in general foremost of the first [i.e., best] painters", especially for his frescoes (in which he included the "Raphael Cartoons"), whereas "Michael Angelo claims the next attention. He did not possess so many excellences as Raffaelle, but those he had were of the highest kind..." Echoing the sixteenth-century views above, Reynolds goes on to say of Raphael:

<blockquote>The excellency of this extraordinary man lay in the propriety, beauty, and majesty of his characters, his judicious contrivance of his composition, correctness of drawing, purity of taste, and the skilful accommodation of other men's conceptions to his own purpose. Nobody excelled him in that judgment, with which he united to his own observations on nature the energy of Michael Angelo, and the beauty and simplicity of the antique. To the question, therefore, which ought to hold the first rank, Raffaelle or Michael Angelo, it must be answered, that if it is to be given to him who possessed a greater combination of the higher qualities of the art than any other man, there is no doubt but Raffaelle is the first. But if, according to [[Longinus (literature)|Longinus]], the sublime, being the highest excellence that human composition can attain to, abundantly compensates the absence of every other beauty, and atones for all other deficiencies, then Michael Angelo demands the preference.<ref>The 1772 Discourse [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2176/2176-h/2176-h.htm Online text of Reynold's Discourses] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070227211527/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2176/2176-h/2176-h.htm |date=2007-02-27 }} The whole passage is worth reading.</ref></blockquote> Reynolds was less enthusiastic about Raphael's panel paintings, but the slight sentimentality of these made them enormously popular in the 19th century: "We have been familiar with them from childhood onwards, through a far greater mass of reproductions than any other artist in the world has ever had..." wrote [[Heinrich Wölfflin|Wölfflin]], who was born in 1862, of Raphael's Madonnas.<ref>Wölfflin:82,</ref>

In Germany, Raphael had an immense influence on religious art of the [[Nazarene movement]] and [[Düsseldorf school of painting]] in the 19th century. In contrast, in England the [[Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood]] explicitly reacted against his influence (and that of his admirers such as [[Joshua Reynolds]]), seeking to return to styles that pre-dated what they saw as his baneful influence. According to a critic whose ideas greatly influenced them, [[John Ruskin]]:
<blockquote><p>The doom of the arts of Europe went forth from that chamber [the Stanza della Segnatura], and it was brought about in great part by the very excellencies of the man who had thus marked the commencement of decline. The perfection of execution and the beauty of feature which were attained in his works, and in those of his great contemporaries, rendered finish of execution and beauty of form the chief objects of all artists; and thenceforward execution was looked for rather than thought, and beauty rather than veracity.</p>
<p>And as I told you, these are the two secondary causes of the decline of art; the first being the loss of moral purpose. Pray note them clearly. In mediæval art, thought is the first thing, execution the second; in modern art execution is the first thing, and thought the second. And again, in mediæval art, truth is first, beauty second; in modern art, beauty is first, truth second. The mediæval principles led up to Raphael, and the modern principles lead down from him.<ref>John Ruskin (1853), ''Pre-Raphaelitism'', p. 127 [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23593/23593-h/23593-h.htm#LECTURE_IV online at Project Gutenburg] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081226105825/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23593/23593-h/23593-h.htm#LECTURE_IV |date=2008-12-26 }}</ref></p></blockquote>

By 1900, Raphael's popularity was surpassed by Michelangelo and Leonardo, perhaps as a reaction against the etiolated Raphaelism of 19th-century academic artists such as [[Bouguereau]].<ref name="Ettlinger & Ettlinger:11">Ettlinger & Ettlinger:11</ref> Although art historian [[Bernard Berenson]] in 1952 termed Raphael the "most famous and most loved" master of the High Renaissance,<ref>[[Bernard Berenson|Berenson, Bernard]], ''Italian Painters of the renaissance, Vol 2 Florentine and Central Italian Schools'', Phaidon 1952 (refs to 1968 ed), p. 94</ref> art historians Leopold and Helen Ettlinger say that Raphael's lesser popularity in the 20th century is made obvious by "the contents of art library shelves ... In contrast to volume upon volume that reproduce yet again detailed photographs of the Sistine Ceiling or Leonardo's drawings, the literature on Raphael, particularly in English, is limited to only a few books".<ref name="Ettlinger & Ettlinger:11"/> They conclude, nonetheless, that "of all the great Renaissance masters, Raphael's influence is the most continuous."<ref>Ettlinger & Ettlinger:230</ref>