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| Raphael Study for painting - The Deposition ca. 1505 drawing Cabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence |
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| Raphael Lucretia ca. 1508-10 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"This monumental study of Lucretia was rediscovered in a collection in Montreal, and was published by Stock in 1984, as by Raphael; this attribution has been widely endorsed by subsequent scholars . . . the Metropolitan Museum sheet belongs in the early part of Raphael's Roman career, perhaps during the first two years of his arrival in the eternal city. He recasts here a heroic early Roman legend to focus on the rhetorical gesture of Lucretia as a model of sublime virtue, which heightens the drama of her death. According to Livy's History of Rome and Ovid's Fasti, the noble matron, Lucretia, committed suicide following her rape by Sextus, son of the tyrant Tarquin the Proud. Her husband, and later Junius Brutus, avenged her honour by leading a revolt that would help institute the republic as a form of government. Raphael chose to depict the dramatic moment when Lucretia is about to plunge a dagger into her chest, and his design reveals an arresting command of antique Roman sculpture and literary sources. The pose for the monumental female figure was clearly inspired by a Roman sculpture, for similar statue types can be recognized in the pages of Renaissance model books with copies after the antique . . . But the sculptural grandeur and monumentality of form evident in the Lucretia drawing speak freshly of Raphael's encounter with Roman antiquity in 1508-1510. The proportions of the imposing idealized female figure appear to be those of the canon of antique sculpture, although she may not be based on any single, identifiable Roman statue."
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| Raphael Herm with outspread arms ca. 1516-17 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Raphael Herm with raised left arm, right arm lowered 1518 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Raphael Study for Adam in the Dispute of the Holy Sacrament fresco Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican ca. 1509 drawing Cabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence |
"The principal drawing on this sheet from the Uffizi is a preparatory study by Raphael for the figure of Adam in his fresco for the Dispute of the Sacrament in the Stanza della Segnatura, the first of the rooms to be decorated by the artist in the new apartments Julius II had chosen for himself in the Vatican Palace. Raphael, who had come to Rome towards the end of 1508, found himself sharing the work on this room with Il Sodoma and the Netherlandish artist Johannes Ruysch. Vasari reports that Julius II, upon seeing the first examples of Raphael's efforts, decided to entrust him exclusively with the commission and dismissed the other artists. . . . The Uffizi sheet belongs to a late phase in the preparation of the fresco, when Raphael was working out compositional problems and analyzing individual figures through studies of live models. The three-quarters view from below and the positioning of the legs and right arm are carried through in the corresponding figure in the Dispute. In contrast to the treatment in the painting, however, the back here seems slightly more bent, there is a more pronounced torsion in the neck, and the head is inclined at a different angle. The facial features are only summarily sketched, while the muscular mass in the rest of the body is carefully and delicately worked up with dense hatchings and cross-hatchings to create depth. As well, the delineation of the contours is remarkably effective in shaping the figure and defining details. The style of draftsmanship shows how the artist, at this very early stage in his Roman period, had already acquainted himself with Michelangelo's new creations in the Sistine Chapel, just steps away from where he was working."
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| Raphael Putto carrying Medici ring and feathers ca. 1513-14 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Raphael Study for two Angels ca. 1517-18 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Raphael Christ in Glory ca. 1519-20 drawing Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Raphael Study for figure of Melpomene in the Parnassus fresco Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican ca. 1509-10 drawing (recto) Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
"Raphael's highly developed vision of grace and decorum shines out in his exquisite study for the Muse of Tragedy, Melpomene, who appears in the Parnassus fresco on the north wall of the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican. . . . Parnassus, a Greek mountain sacred to Apollo and the Muses, sheltered Delphi on its southern slopes, where Apollo was worshipped and an oracle spoke in his name. The protector of music and poetry, Apollo was the leader of the Muses, who were associated with the various arts. Melpomene, holding the traditional mask worn by actors in Greek tragedy, appears on the left of the group, with the epic poet Virgil nearby (on the verso of this sheet is a study for Virgil's pose and drapery [directly below]). As divine and inspirational figures in the classical imagination, the Muses were often portrayed in ancient art, especially in relief sculptures on sarcophagi. Raphael appropriately envisioned the figure of Melpomene in terms of antique sculpture, and endowed her with a remote, statuesque beauty. . . . The purity and rigour of Raphael's line drawing is remarkable: his pen traces the contours of the figure and the folds of the drapery in fluid, continuous strokes and a strong, even pressure, with few revisions. His concept of Melpomene was to be modified in the final painting, but here she is a sister of the elegant figures of winged Victories seen on Roman triumphal arches. Her turning head, flattened profile, and rhythmic, floating shape recall figures in relief sculpture, and her pose is partly define by the curved, semicircular line against which she seems to rest, which evokes the shape of an arch."
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| Raphael Study for figure of Virgil in the Parnassus fresco Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican ca. 1509-10 drawing (verso of Melpomene) Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Raphael St Paul rending his garments ca. 1515-16 drawing Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Raphael Allegorical figure of Poetry ca. 1509-1510 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
"The drawing is a study for the seated figure in the allegory of Poetry, one of the frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura's complex ceiling divided into panels and medallions illustrating Theology, Philosophy, Jurisprudence, and the poetic arts – themes presumably chosen in connection with the room's likely original use as Julius II's personal library. . . . The correspondence between the painted version and the Windsor study is quite close in the pose and in the drapery over the lower half of the figure. The artist first drew a sketch of the nude model to articulate the proportions of the body and the position of the legs under the drapery, employing a stylus that left only an incised line in the surface of the unprepared paper – an apparently innovative technique that recurs frequently in Raphael's Roman drawings, allowing him to use chalks more freely for the finished drawing without the risk of interference from the underdrawing. Although the squaring might lead one to assume that this figure was enlarged directly to its final dimensions in a cartoon, there exists an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi that seems to document a slightly different later drawing by Raphael, now lost, that would have been closer to the fresco version. The soft modeling achieved with a delicate sfumato helps give a timeless dimension to this allegorical figure, whose classical prototype remains unidentified, and whose simple and natural expression allowed the artist to reuse her at least twice: in the roughly contemporary Saint Catherine of Alexandria (National Gallery, London) and in the Triumph of Galatea (Villa Farnesina, Rome)."
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| Raphael Figure studies for the Disputation of the Holy Sacrament fresco Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican ca. 1509-11 drawing (recto) Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Raphael Figure studies for the Disputation of the Holy Sacrament fresco Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican ca. 1509-11 drawing (verso) Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Raphael Composition study for the School of Athens fresco Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican ca. 1509 drawing Cabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence |
– notes on the drawings are from the catalogue of a 2009 exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada – From Raphael to Carracci: The Art of Papal Rome, edited by David Franklin