Well yes, the labels may be unfamiliar to you since they were applied by art historians long after – uh, again, it's difficult to put this delicately – long after your death. It's a strange feeling to be sitting with you three and explaining to you just how you have been classified and studied. And that brings me back to Raphael's work, and what I like about it.
This shouldn't take long.
Newkirk (ignoring the snide remark)
Raphael, I imagine that, in describing your paintings, you would be comfortable with adjectives like elegant, rational, poised, controlled, balanced and generously illuminated overall. Am I right?
As far as they go, I think these words apply, yes.
Those descriptions certainly seem to fit the School of Athens. That painting is symmetrically balanced within the architectural setting. By the way, it's generally assumed that the setting was designed by your brother-in-law, Bramante, who gave it to you for use in the painting. Is that true?
Raphael (with a sly grin)
What is it the children say? That's for me to know, and you to find out.
Spoken just like the child you are. Of course it's true. Steal something from me one day and from Bramante the next. Humph.
Maybe we'll never know for sure. But back to the School. Nothing in the painting is hidden in deep shadow; the lighting is even throughout. Every character in the painting is posed with grace; no one is about to stumble and fall. The scene looks as though it were carefully laid out as a kind of lesson.
Which it is, in a way, a lesson about important philosophers, artists (glances at Michelangelo) and other thinkers, living and dead. Plato and Aristotle argue amicably in the centre, and the discussions flow towards the viewer as they spill gently down the stairs.
Newkirk
And these characteristics appear in your work consistently. I'm thinking of the Small Cowper Madonna and the Sistine Madonna.
Even when the characters in your painting are in motion, as in your Galatea, they each seem to have been posed just so, in order to present each figure elegantly. And in that painting again, the composition is symmetrically balanced, top to bottom, side to side.
And these characteristics appear in your work consistently. I'm thinking of the Small Cowper Madonna and the Sistine Madonna.
Raphael, Small Cowper Madonna, oil on panel, 1505,
59.5 cm × 44 cm (23.4 in × 17 in)
Raphael, Sistine Madonna, oil on canvas, 1512,
265 cm × 196 cm (104 in × 77 in)
Raphael, Triumph of Galatea, 1514, fresco,
750 cm × 570 cm (295 in × 225 in)
Raphael (pouring more wine, and a bit cocky by now)
Yes, yes. It's clear that someone has been studying my work. Are you about to make a particular point?
These are the characteristics of High Renaissance painting in Italy, and you are its exemplary practitioner. Now, this is what I love about your painting: your work is elegant, your line controlled. And generations of artists have admired these same qualities. I say this with a qualification: I also like art that seems completely opposed to what you have done.
(six eyebrows are raised in unison).
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