Raphael, La belle jardinière (Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist), 1507, oil on panel, 48 × 31½” / 122 × 80 cm (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:
[flickr_tags user_id=”82032880@N00″ tags=”jardiniere,”]
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:03] We’re in the Louvre, and we’re looking at a painting by Raphael called “La belle jardinière.” It’s a lovely Raphael Madonna and Child with the infant Saint John the Baptist, in that pyramid composition that we so often associate with the High Renaissance.
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:21] What’s interesting is that the Virgin Mary is not in a religious environment. We see no archways. She’s got no throne.
[0:28] If we’re to argue that she had a throne at all, it would be the throne of nature. She sits on a rock in a field, with a beautiful atmospheric perspective behind her creating this lovely, this verdant environment.
Dr. Harris: [0:39] As we look down at the foreground, we’re seeing plants, perhaps the edge of a pond, and little flowers.
[0:45] The loveliest passages to me are the way that Christ, on the left, stands on his mother’s foot, really showing that kind of dependence on his mother, and yet also a growing sense of independence as he seeks to take the book out of her hands and looks up at her.
[1:03] Of course, the content of that book foretells his own demise. It foretells the Crucifixion.
Dr. Zucker: [1:10] The look on Mary’s face is one that suggests that she knows this. She’s looking at him to in a sense gauge whether or not he’s ready for that knowledge.
Dr. Harris: [1:21] She puts her right arm around him, protecting him, and seems to hesitate for a moment with her left hand, whether to allow him to take that book or not. Saint John the Baptist, who kneels in prayer toward Christ, is in a very graceful pose as he kneels down on his right knee, tilts his neck up, and looks up at Christ.
[1:44] We have that High Renaissance gracefulness and ideal beauty.
Dr. Zucker: [1:48] Let’s look for just a moment at the gazes within the painting. I think you’re right to start with John the Baptist and his eyes gazing up at Christ, who in turns, body and face, moves up to Mary. Mary then returns that gaze, in a sense sends our gaze back down to Christ.
Dr. Harris: [2:04] Everyone’s gaze is really focused on Christ.
Dr. Zucker: [2:08] We’re in the middle of that triangle, as we watch them look at each other.
Dr. Harris: [2:13] Mary’s ideally beautiful and we have only the faintest outline of a halo. That halo is disappearing as we enter the High Renaissance because the figures exude a kind of divinity by their ideal beauty. We don’t need that symbol of a halo anymore.
Dr. Zucker: [2:27] And for Raphael, it’s nature that takes on that role, no longer those stage props of divinity necessary, as you said, but it’s the landscape itself. It’s God’s world that he’s created that is an expression of divinity. It’s beauty itself that is the expression of divinity here, Mary’s beauty, Christ’s beauty, and even John’s beauty.
[2:46] [music]
