The sThe Sublime Perfection Of Raphaelublime perfection of Raphael 1080p

Martha Teichner offers up a master class on the works of an Italian original, Raphael, now on display. How old was Raphael when he did that? We suspect that he was 17. Yes, 17. What is really extraordinary is the perfection of his technique in drawing. Likely a self-portrait. You can see in this chalk sketch, by a kid, what was coming. How, in an incredibly short time, Raphael would be regarded as one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance, right up there with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Where does Raphael fit in that big three? I think posterity sometimes sees him in third place. I believe he is in equal place. We have 237 works total. Curator Carmen Bambach spent eight years putting together the first comprehensive exhibition of Raphael's work ever in the United States, which just opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Born in Urbino in 1483, Raphael's precociousness explodes into brilliance when he moves to Florence at the age of 21. He encounters Leonardo, who is very interested in sort of the way that an artist can let the creative juices flow on the paper, and so Raphael absorbs this, and all of a sudden we see this tremendous sense of movement, of drama, storytelling. He's able to pick the climactic point of any story. He's got to be one of the most amazing storytellers that way. The humanity, the tenderness of a mother with her baby, his drawings and paintings of the Madonna and Child are beautiful exercises in wishful thinking. The mortality of women of childbearing age was stratospheric, and the same thing for children. When one has Madonnas that look like they're a beautiful picture of health, these bambini that are plump and delightful, you want to pinch them, it's like producing a kind of idealized universe that was entirely aspirational. As opposed to his portraits, which look like the real people he painted. That Pinto Altoviti is kind of my favorite portrait in that I have always had a crush on that guy. He was one of the Pope's bankers and a friend of Raphael's. His gaze, the tendrils of hair down his back, the personification of sensuality. This is his great friend, Baldassare Castiglione. Raphael's friendships with well-connected patrons led to bigger and bigger commissions, ultimately to Rome and the Vatican at the age of 25 to produce frescoes for the Pope's private offices and library, reproduced in the Met show at three-quarter size. He slipped a likeness of himself into the most famous, the School of Athens, and of Leonardo. Some scholars say that's a brooding Michelangelo. Michelangelo was intensely envious of Raphael. Raphael was the tragedy that happened to Michelangelo in many ways because it came so easily to him. Raphael was commissioned to create the designs for enormous tapestries meant to hang directly below Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. Basically, it's Raphael competing with Michelangelo. That rivalry. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. In this one, you can even see the reflection of a fisherman's face in the water. This is the most beautiful drawing that Raphael ever produced. Somebody didn't get that for shortening of the fingers and the different planes of the hands in a credible way. This is how you tell the greatest artist from somebody who is just good. The drawing was for the transfiguration, what would turn out to be his last painting. On April 6, 1520, his 37th birthday, Raphael died of a fever in Rome. The inscription on his tomb in the Pantheon reads, While he was alive, nature feared she would be surpassed by him. When he died, she feared that she would die too.