Focus on Transfiguration (Raphael) and explain the Analysis and interpretation.
The iconography of the picture has been interpreted as a reference to the delivery of the city of Narbonne from the repeated assaults of the Saracens. Pope Calixtus III proclaimed August 6 a feast day on the occasion of the victory of the Christians in 1456.Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu noted that the healing of the obsessed boy in the foreground takes precedence over the figure of Christ. Modern critics have furthered Montesquieu's criticism by suggesting that the painting should be renamed to "Healing of the Obsessed Youth".J. M. W. Turner had seen The Transfiguration in the Louvre, in 1802. At the conclusion of the version of his first lecture, delivered on 7 January 1811, as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Turner demonstrated how the upper part of the composition is made up of intersecting triangles, forming a pyramid with Christ at the top.In a 1870 publication, German art historian Car Justi observes that the painting depicts two subsequent episodes in the biblical narrative of Christ: after the transfiguration, Jesus encounters a man who begs mercy for his devil-possessed son.Raphael plays on a tradition equating epilepsy with the aquatic moon (luna, from whence lunatic). This causal link is played on by the watery reflection of the moon in the lower left corner of the painting; the boy is literally moonstruck. In Raphael's time, epilepsy was often equated with the moon (morbus lunaticus), possession by demons (morbus daemonicus), and also, paradoxically, the sacred (morbus sacer). In the 16th century, it was not uncommon for sufferers of epilepsy to be burned at the stake, such was the fear evoked by the condition. The link between the phase of the moon and epilepsy would only be broken scientifically in 1854 by Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours.Raphael's Transfiguration can be considered a prefiguration of both Mannerism, as evidenced by the stylised, contorted poses of the figures at the bottom of the picture; and of Baroque painting, as evidenced by the dramatic tension imbued within those figures, and the strong use of chiaroscuro throughout.
As a reflection on the artist, Raphael likely viewed The Transfiguration as his triumph. Raphael uses the contrast of Jesus presiding over men to satiate his papal commissioners in the Roman Catholic Church. Raphael uses the cave to symbolize the Renaissance style, easily observed in the extended index finger as a reference to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Additionally, he subtly incorporates a landscape in the background, but uses darker coloring to show his disdain for the style. Yet the focal point for the viewer is the Baroque styled child and his guarding father. In all, Raphael successfully appeased his commissioners, paid homage to his predecessors, and ushered in the subsequent predominance of Baroque painting.On the simplest level, the painting can be interpreted as depicting a dichotomy: the redemptive power of Christ, as symbolised by the purity and symmetry of the top half of the painting; contrasted with the flaws of Man, as symbolised by the dark, chaotic scenes in the bottom half of the painting.
The philosopher Nietzsche interpreted the painting in his book The Birth of Tragedy as an image of the interdependence of Apollonian and Dionysian principles.The sixteenth-century painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects that The Transfiguration was Raphael's "most beautiful and most divine" work.
Saracen Sistine Chapel Jesus Raphael dichotomy Montesquieu Saracens Christ Enlightenment Jacques-Joseph Moreau The Birth of Tragedy feast day Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects Catholic Church Louvre Apollonian Giorgio Vasari Pope Calixtus III Roman Catholic Church chiaroscuro Nietzsche Narbonne J. M. W. Turner Dionysian Apollonian and Dionysian Michelangelo Royal Academy Car Justi left Baroque painting Mannerism