Raphael, The Alba Madonna, c. 1510, oil on panel transferred to canvas (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.)
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:00] We’re in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and we’re looking at a really beautiful painting. It’s Raphael’s “Alba Madonna” from about 1510.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:12] Raphael was famous for his incredibly beautiful and sweet Madonnas. This is a perfect example of that.
Dr. Zucker: [0:20] It’s a really unusual painting. You have the Virgin Mary. You have the young Christ on her lap, but if you look at the way that her arms are extended and the way that her lap is extended, it’s almost as if she’s really a throne for him to sit on.
Dr. Harris: [0:36] We have essentially the same cast of characters that we have in Leonardo’s “Virgin of the Rocks.”
Dr. Zucker: [0:43] The third figure?
Dr. Harris: [0:43] Saint John the Baptist.
Dr. Zucker: [0:45] How can you tell?
Dr. Harris: [0:46] The only thing that’s missing here that was in the Leonardo was the figure of an angel.
Dr. Zucker: [0:51] Of course, we’ve entered into the High Renaissance now. In a way that — in a sense the angel has really disappeared. Those sort of overt expressions.
Dr. Harris: [1:00] Spiritual figures.
Dr. Zucker: [1:00] That’s right, those overt expressions of the divine.
Dr. Harris: [1:03] Right.
Dr. Zucker: [1:03] In a sense they’ve been replaced by nature itself.
Dr. Harris: [1:06] Raphael definitely has looked at Leonardo and his Madonna has her arm around Saint John much the same way that she does in the Virgin of the Rocks.
Dr. Zucker: [1:15] Yes.
Dr. Harris: [1:16] We have those lingering faint…
Dr. Zucker: [1:17] Well, after all she’s his aunt.
Dr. Harris: [1:19] That’s true. We have those lingering faint halos.
Dr. Zucker: [1:23] The faintest trace, still.
Dr. Harris: [1:25] Right, and they’re going to be gone. Actually, I suppose with Leonardo they’d already been gone, but Raphael is still holding onto them a bit. You’re right there’s a kind of overwhelming humanism here, a humanism that’s transcended by the ideal beauty of the figures.
Dr. Zucker: [1:40] So he’s really expressing divinity through this ideal beauty then.
Dr. Harris: [1:45] Also I think through the incredibly fluid and graceful way that the figures move.
Dr. Zucker: [1:51] Almost like dance.
Dr. Harris: [1:52] It is almost like dance. It’s incredibly complicated. Mary looks down past Saint John, almost looking into the future, her arm around him, her left hand holding a page in the Bible. The Christ Child twisting his body.
Dr. Zucker: [2:09] He’s sort of accepting the cross. Right?
Dr. Harris: [2:12] A kind of acceptance of his destiny, of his sacrifice.
Dr. Zucker: [2:15] Right.
Dr. Harris: [2:16] Mary has her right leg tucked under her left leg. There’s a sense that she’s caught moving here. There’s nothing static about any part of this image.
Dr. Zucker: [2:26] Even though there’s this lack of the static there’s also a kind of, I guess because of their scale within the landscape, a kind of…
Dr. Harris: [2:33] They’re very monumental.
Dr. Zucker: [2:34] Yes, there’s this monumentality, this sort of sense of seriousness here.
Dr. Harris: [2:38] Absolutely.
Dr. Zucker: [2:39] They are in this beautiful, natural environment, and yet we get a sense of a kind of classicism. Raphael is in Rome and he’s really looking at the classical.
Dr. Harris: [2:50] And he’s concurrently working on…
Dr. Zucker: [2:53] This is quite a moment, isn’t it?
Dr. Harris: [2:54] …the Stanza della Segnatura and the school of Athens included there, and at the same time Michelangelo, of course, is painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Dr. Zucker: [3:01] Right at this moment.
Dr. Harris: [3:03] So there’s this incredible interest in monumental, serious figures and monumental commissions and major masterpieces.
Dr. Zucker: [3:12] But this is a fairly modest painting in its scale.
Dr. Harris: [3:16] It’s about three feet.
Dr. Zucker: [3:17] Yeah, that’s right. This is just something he does on the side.
Dr. Harris: [3:21] Amazing, isn’t it? What a man.
Dr. Zucker: [3:23] Going back to the idea of Leonardo…
Dr. Harris: [3:26] Yes, there’s a lot of Leonardo here.
Dr. Zucker: [3:28] If you look at the delicate and careful rendering for instance of the…
Dr. Harris: [3:31] The flowers.
Dr. Zucker: [3:31] Yeah. These botanical specimens, very much like in “Madonna of the Rocks.”
Dr. Harris: [3:35] Very much like the “Madonna of the Rocks.” Hard to know if Raphael himself is looking at Northern Renaissance painting or he’s got that influence indirectly.
Dr. Zucker: [3:43] So, that’s interesting. We talked about the classical influence, but also a little bit of the north.
Dr. Harris: [3:46] Yes, and we have an oil painting here.
Dr. Zucker: [3:49] That’s right. Originally on panel.
Dr. Harris: [3:52] We have none of that kind of sfumato, smoky mysteriousness that we have in Leonardo. There’s a real clarity here and sweetness instead of mystery, I think.
Dr. Zucker: [4:03] If you look at the composition, it’s just so beautifully handled.
Dr. Harris: [4:07] Within the circular frame.
Dr. Zucker: [4:08] Which is a tough thing.
Dr. Harris: [4:09] Oh, my God, it’s really hard to make things fit comfortably within that circular shape.
Dr. Zucker: [4:13] And the figures don’t feel cramped. They feel as if they have room to move and yet it does not call attention to the circle at all, to the roundel. It’s just this really carefully rendered…and this incredible kind of intimacy as well between the figures.
[4:26] They’re not really looking at each other, although Christ may be looking at John. John, as you said, is looking upward towards heaven. Mary seems to almost be looking a little bit past the two of them, but nevertheless there’s this wonderful kind of bond, this wonderful…this beautiful kind of intimacy.
Dr. Harris: [4:42] There is, and there’s a kind of interaction between the figures that I think is really unique to the High Renaissance, there’s the loss of that static separateness between the figures that was still there in the early Renaissance. I forget what Vasari calls it. It’s a little bit of a clunkiness that’s still there.
Dr. Zucker: [4:58] A kind of isolation of the figures.
Dr. Harris: [5:00] Yeah.
Dr. Zucker: [5:00] But we see it disappear certainly in Leonardo’s “Last Supper” and of course, we also see that in Michelangelo’s ceiling, which is being painted at this very moment.
Dr. Harris: [5:08] That idea of unifying the composition within a pyramid shape also is here, and the atmospheric perspective is just beautiful.
Dr. Zucker: [5:15] It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?
Dr. Harris: [5:16] Do you think that looks like a Tuscan hillside?
Dr. Zucker: [5:19] I would think so, except that because of the classical influence and because of the idea that he’s in Rome, maybe something closer to the outskirts of Rome, especially with some of the older buildings in the back, very picturesque, really the kind of thing that later 18th century painters will pick up on.
Dr. Harris: [5:34] And as she’s sitting and looking at her right side, is she leaning on some rocks?
Dr. Zucker: [5:39] It must be, or sitting against a tree stump. It’s a little bit hard to make out.
Dr. Harris: [5:43] We have the idea of the Madonna of Humility, seated on the ground, an image which emphasizes her humbleness. Even though she provides her body as a throne for Christ, she herself is sitting on the ground and is a very humble figure.
Dr. Zucker: [5:59] That’s right, humble but still having a divinity…
Dr. Harris: [6:01] Divinity.
Dr. Zucker: [6:02] Divinity and importance. Part of that, again, comes from the classicizing of the pose of the figures, but also look here. Raphael has dressed at least Mary in classical garb.
Dr. Harris: [6:11] Very classical, and in fact the way her clothing clings to her leg reminds me of classical sculpture very specifically.
Dr. Zucker: [6:20] That’s true. Probably sculpture that Raphael would not have seen yet, things that are in Greece.
Dr. Harris: [6:25] Maybe.
Dr. Zucker: [6:25] Nevertheless, you’re right. Maybe there were some sources.
Dr. Harris: [6:27] He must have seen some ancient Greek relief sculptures, I imagine.
Dr. Zucker: [6:31] Yeah, and there was real interest at this moment.
Dr. Harris: [6:33] Absolutely. They’re digging things up all over Rome.
Dr. Zucker: [6:35] Yep.
[6:36] [music]
