Raphael, Madonna of the Goldfinch, 1505-6, oil on panel, 42″ x 30″ (107 x 77 cm) (Uffizi, Florence)
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:03] We’re in the Uffizi, and we’re looking at a Raphael, and this is the “Madonna of the Goldfinch,” which is a really funny title.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:10] It is a funny title. Saint John, who we see here on the left, is holding out a goldfinch, the bird, to the Christ Child, who strokes its head. The goldfinch is a symbol of the Passion of Christ, of Christ’s suffering, and so we have that idea that we often have of the foretelling of Christ’s terrible future.
Dr. Zucker: [0:31] At the same time, this is a painting of two children and a mother, and so it exists in several different planes because they’re children doing childlike things, one showing a pet to another, one wanting to touch it, the mother looking down protectively.
Dr. Harris: [0:45] Even a kind of tenderness between the mother and son; look at the way that Christ puts his foot on his mother’s. There’s that skin-to-skin moment of human contact there that’s really lovely.
[0:57] But to me, Christ doesn’t look like a child having fun. He looks very much all-knowing. I suppose if we were looking at a painting from the 1300s, Christ would look — instead of looking like a baby, he would look like a little man in order to indicate his sense of wisdom.
[1:13] Here, I think Raphael communicates that through the elegance of Christ’s body. Look at the way he lifts his arm up, strokes the goldfinch, tilts his head back, he stands in this incredibly elegant contrappasto that no child would ever stand in.
Dr. Zucker: [1:29] It’s true.
Dr. Harris: [1:29] It’s such a pose.
Dr. Zucker: [1:31] It’s true. There’s a beautiful foreshortening of his head, of his face, as he leans back. But then there is an energy and childlikeness in that we see in John. John seems so engaged — “Look what I can show you.”
Dr. Harris: [1:43] Yet it’s this symbol, this really potent symbol of Christ’s suffering.
Dr. Zucker: [1:47] What’s so interesting is that unlike the 1300s, as you mentioned before, we don’t have the Madonna on a throne here. Nature itself is the throne. We have this verdant environment, this beautiful atmospheric perspective, and she sits on a rock; that is, divinity is all around us.
[2:04] By the time we get to the late 15th century, to the early 16th century, in the High Renaissance, nature itself has taken on the expression of God. We don’t need, in a sense, those kingly symbols.
Dr. Harris: [2:15] Look at how composed it is in a way that we don’t even notice immediately. We have a pyramid composition with Mary at the top and Saint John and Christ on either side, and that sense of real stability and balance that’s also so much a part of the High Renaissance.
Dr. Zucker: [2:30] Even as the figures are so engaged with each other and there’s real dialogue that’s taking place within there is also that sense, that High Renaissance sense, you’re right, of balance, of perfection, of the eternal.
Dr. Harris: [2:41] That interlocking of gestures and glances. Mary looking down at John. John looking at Christ. Christ looking back at John. All of them enclosed within the pyramid structure of Mary’s body. That unified composition that brings everything together in this really lovely landscape.
Dr. Zucker: [2:59] I’m intrigued by the book. Mary had been reading, she’s kept her place; and of course that reminds us of an earlier scene, the Annunciation, when Gabriel interrupts her as she’s been piously reading the Bible. Here she’s been reading, and now she’s interrupted by her charges. She’s doing a little bit of babysitting.
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