Michelangelo never forgave Bramante and Rafael for what they did.
While he was away, Bramante opened up the Sistine Chapel and let his friend Rafael have a peek at the frescoes in the ceiling. Michelangelo had worked for months behind locked doors. He resented even Pope Julius’ sneak visits. Now the cat was out of the bag before the frescoes were even finished.
And so far had the cat run that Rafael quickly changed this figure of Isaiah he had been working on in the St. Agostino church and made it Michelangelo-esque.
Compare it to Michelangelo’s Isaiah on the Sistine ceiling.
When later Michelangelo saw Rafael’s Prophet he was convinced, “and rightly”, says Vasari, “that Bramante had deliberately done him that wrong for the sake of Rafael’s reputation and benefit.” To the end of his days Michelangelo put on a sour face whenever anyone praised Rafael. “Everything he knew he learned from me,” he would say.
Maybe Rafael should have refused to look at the secret ceiling. But the peek was one of the most important moments of his career. Few would have profitted so much from a visit to the chapel, before or after it was open to the public. Vasari, who must have commiserated with Michelangelo in his presence, did not put on a moralizing face when others talked of Rafael. He admired him—not least for his imitating Michelangelo and others.
Rafael loved his art so much, he says, that he was always trying to improve. Even when he had already earned a reputation as a finished master and could have gone on painting in the style he had learned as a boy with Perugino, he risked failure and the disappointment of those who admired his work by experimenting with the new styles he considered superior to his own. Few artists would have done that. Leonardo’s style “enraptured” him and he set about trying to find and imitate its secret. And when he saw Michelangelo’s figures, Rafael realized that his own were deficient and so he began to study the nude form. “What [Rafael] had seen of Michelangelo’s paintings,” says Vasari, “enabled him to give his own style more majesty and grandeur.
“…..Nevertheless, Rafael realized that in this matter he could never rival the accomplishments of Michelangelo, and therefore, like the judicious man he was….he resolved to emulate and perhaps surpass him in other respects….He decided not to waste his time by imitating Michelangelo’s style but to attain a catholic excellence in the other fields of painting.”
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Raphael was a master copier, even during his days as an apprentice he would copy his teacher so closely that its hard to tell them apart. I can really feel Michelangelo’s side to this story though, but its too bad he didn’t take it as a compliment that Raphael looked up to him. Then again, getting along with Michelangelo was probably a big task itself.
It is hard to resist taking at least a little from the ideas of superior painters. That is one way we learn. When you see a good piece it is often, “why didn’t I think of that?” Then later a portion of the design sort of creeps into your work on its own so to speak.
Oh my gosh – I love your stories of the personal trials and tibulations of the great masters. Great read!!! Where do you get all of your info?
Thanks, Lisa. I’m tempted to pull a Bill and say “from my mother”. But most come from Vasari.
Right, Bill. And the same thing happens, as you know, when you write. Of course spotting something good is already a kind of invention. The fact that somebody else saw it first doesn’t need to matter. It could never mean to him what it does to you anyway. You will make it your own.
It’s a shame, isn’t it, Aryul, that Rafael died so young. He had gone through a Perugino period, then a Leonardo one, and then a Michelangelo one. And most people think he got better and better. What would he have come up with in another five or ten years–which direction would he have gone?
Michelangelo must have seen his superiority and maybe didn’t deny it. But he used his praise for Sebastiano del Piombo and Andrea del Sarto–neither of which ranks as high.
At least Raphael was gone with a bang! (no pun intended: I wouldn’t say he died while he was banging his women! I’m too polite…)
did Vasari used “catholic” in the sense of “universal” (catolicos in Ancien Greek means that, I think)?
Yes, Danu–catholic in the sense of universal. As for Rafael’s death, I just finished my next post on that. See it tomorrow.
Rafael’s anatomy in the pose is more accurate. I can see why Michelangelo would be upset. The best of all artists don’t copy, they learn from each other and take it a step further.