Sistine Madonna

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Sistine Madonna (Raffael)
Sistine Madonna
Raphael , 1512/13
Oil on canvas
256 × 196 cm
Old Masters Picture Gallery Dresden

The "Sistine Madonna" by Raphael is one of the most famous paintings of the Italian Renaissance . It is in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden after it was bought by King August III in 1754 . had been purchased. The painting in its entirety is less familiar to many people than the two putti figures at the lower edge of the picture ( Raphael's angel ), which appear millions of times as independent motifs in the advertising industry or as posters and postcards in everyday culture.

history

55 cents block of stamps

The image of Mary was created by Raffaello Santi in 1512/1513 for the high altar of the monastery church of San Sisto in Piacenza . It is a work commissioned by Pope Julius II , which celebrates the Pope's victory over the French who invaded Italy and was donated on the occasion of the incorporation of the city of Piacenza into the Papal States (1512).

In the monastery church the relics of St. Barbara and Sixtus II kept safe. Both are shown in the painting; the monastery was consecrated to St. Sixtus; Raphael's Madonna portrait is ultimately named after him. In addition, the uncle of Pope Julius II, Pope Sixtus IV , once named himself after St. Sixtus and thus the work was a tribute within the Della Rovere family , from which nephew and uncle were descended.

August III. von Polen-Sachsen , a great art collector, had already tried in vain in the first third of the 18th century to acquire another painting by Raphael, the Madonna of Foligno . When he heard that the monks of San Sisto were ready to sell the Sistine Madonna to finance the renovation of their monastery, two-year negotiations began, the outcome of which was approved by Pope Benedict XIV and the Duke of Parma , Philip . The then enormous sum of 25,000 Scudi is assumed to be the selling price . In January 1754 the painting was made by August III. acquired and brought to his collection in Dresden, where it arrived on March 1, 1754 and can still be viewed. A copy of the picture made by Pier Antonio Avanzini as early as 1730 was placed in the monastery of San Sisto.

During the Seven Years' War the painting was kept in the Königstein Fortress . During the Second World War it was evacuated into a railway tunnel in Großcotta . After the Second World War, the painting was confiscated by the victorious Soviet powers as looted art and brought to Moscow . It was returned to the GDR in 1955. In 2012, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden celebrated the 500th anniversary of the painting with the special exhibition Raphael's cult image turns 500 . For this occasion, the picture was given a new frame and new glazing. The painting itself was not restored.

The German Post has also issued a stamp worth 55 cents on the 500th anniversary of the painting.

interpretation

Shadowy angel heads on the upper edge

It was discussed in research to what extent the altarpiece represents a Sacra Conversazione . The majority now believe that Raphael created his own image type with the Sistine. The classic red and blue clad Madonna with the baby Jesus is flanked by Pope Sixtus II, who carries the portraits of Julius II , and Saint Barbara. The three figures are arranged in a triangle; Pulled back curtains in the upper corners of the picture emphasize the geometric composition of the picture . Saint Sixtus, at whose feet the tiara stands as an insignia , points out of the picture to the crucifix in the rood screen. The Madonna and Child look gravely in the direction indicated, while St. Barbara on the right looks humbly down. In its original place, the picture was placed on the back wall of the altar opposite a large crucifix . The crucifix and rood screen that separated the monks' choir are no longer there. The body language of the figures and especially the facial expression of the baby Jesus and his mother seem to express a premonition of Christ's death on the cross.

Image detail: Raphael's angel

The viewer's gaze is directed towards St. Sixtus steered on the left. After that, the composition of the picture keeps the gaze in the picture. St. Sixtus looks at the Madonna and Child, the view of the viewer is further directed to the figure of St. Barbara headed. Their direction of view points to the angels at the lower edge of the picture, who in turn lead to Saint Barbara through their head position. From the other side, the viewer's gaze is drawn to the angels with the arm of St. Sixtus, from these to St. Barbara and then again to the Madonna. In addition, the child is caught in the hand by the counter-swing of the veil. This circle catches the viewer's gaze again and again and directs him to the Madonna.

The background conceals a technical masterpiece of painting of this work - from a great distance you think you can see clouds, but on closer inspection they are the heads of countless angels. The picture as a whole can be interpreted as a representation of a vision. Andreas Henning writes: “The picture shows an epiphany : the spiritual world confronts the viewer. Raphael has skilfully put both spheres, the earthly and the heavenly, together in the picture. ”This vision is also interpreted in such a way that it represents an inner path of experience of the soul , which leads through the stages of purification, enlightenment and unification. Its basis is on the one hand the Renaissance Platonism of Marsilio Ficino and Aegidius de Viterbo ; on the other hand, Raffael takes up aspects of the Rhenish mysticism ( Meister Eckhart ), the Devotio moderna and in particular of Nikolaus von Kues . The soul develops through the stages of the putti, the Sixtus and the Barbara to Maria as the pure soul in which the birth of God takes place.

In Der Wanderer und seine Schatten Raphael, Friedrich Nietzsche names an honest painter who painted the vision of his future wife, a clever, emotionally elegant, very beautiful, silent woman. She carries her firstborn in her arms, who looks at the viewer with male eyes. Raphael was not very interested in the ecstatic piety of those who commissioned the picture. This contradicts the reaction on the faces of the baby Jesus and his mother to the crucifix in the former choir screen that no longer exists in San Sisto. This was intended to stimulate the viewer's ability to sympathize with Christ's work of redemption on the cross through innocent suffering and death. In Nietzsche's time, the installation of the painting opposite the rood screen cross was not yet known. The philosopher interpreted the expression of the Madonna as a symbol of the fate of women in general. Andreas Prater (see below), on the other hand, convincingly demonstrated for the first time that the suffering expression on the Madonna's face and the horror in the child's gaze are explained by the fact that the suffering death on the cross is here both foreseen as a future fate.

The Sistine Madonna as an altarpiece

From Prater and Schwarz it was explained that the looks and pointing gestures of the figures on the high altar picture have two different goals. The gaze of the Madonna and the baby Jesus is directed to an object in front of them, the removed rood screen cross. Schwarz refers to references to the Eucharist , in particular to the practice of exposing the Blessed Sacrament . The angel on the left is looking at the Holy of Holies, and Saint Barbara's gaze is also fixed on it.

Painting materials

The technical examination and pigment analysis of this painting have shown that Raphael used many pigments available during the Renaissance . The Madonna's mantle is painted with natural ultramarine and white lead , yellow ocher was found in the Pope's ornate mantle, and tin-lead yellow in the clothes of Saint Barbara .

reception

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres - The oath of Louis XIII.

The painting of the Sistine Madonna served many subsequent performing artists as a template for their own works:
Eduard Mandel's copperplate engraving based on this painting - made shortly before his death - is one of his most important works. The meaning of Raphael's angels as an independent motif began in 1803 when they were first copied separately by August von der Embde . The isolation changes the gaze originally directed at the Madonna, to one that has no point of reference, i.e. is only directed indefinitely to heaven.

The most famous replica of the Sistine Madonna is located in the Brandenburg state capital Potsdam . The Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. and his art-loving son and successor Friedrich Wilhelm IV. have assembled the royal collection in the Orangery Palace above the anniversary terrace in Sanssouci Park with around 50 copies of paintings by Raphael over the decades . There you can see, among other things, the Sistine Madonna and the Transfiguration of Christ in the specially designed Raphael Hall .

The Sistine Madonna was the favorite painting of the Russian writer Fyodor Michailowitsch Dostojewski . He believed he recognized “the highest revelation of the human spirit” in it and saw the picture in Dresden several times. When asked why he looked at the work of art so often and for so long, he is said to have replied: “So that I don't despair of people.” A reproduction of the painting still hangs in the study of his Petersburg apartment.

The painting served as a template for the Dresden painter Gerhard von Kügelgen . His son, Wilhelm von Kügelgen , wrote in his childhood memories of an old man : “In my mother's spacious living room there was a beautiful picture that, raised on a few steps, filled the middle part of the main wall almost to the ceiling. It was a copy of Raphael's Sistine Madonna that my father had recently completed and given to his mother. It should be the palladium of his house. "

On the occasion of the exhibition "The most beautiful woman in the world turns 500. The Sistine Madonna - Raphael's cult image celebrates her birthday", the Dresden State Art Collections replaced the frame made in 1956 in the neo-renaissance style . The new, elaborately made frame corresponds to a copy of a northern Italian tabernacle . This reflects the sacred origins of Raphael's painting and promotes the aesthetic effect of the exceptional picture.

literature

  • Claudia Brink, Andreas Henning (ed.): Raffaels - Sistine Madonna. History and myth of a masterpiece. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich et al. 2005, ISBN 3-422-06565-2 (exhibition catalog).
  • Carl Gustav Carus : About the Sistine Madonna of Raphael. Dresden 1867 ( digitized version )
  • Katharina Gaenssler : Sixtina MMXII . Edition Minerva, Neu-Isenburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-943964-00-4 .
  • Andreas Henning: Raphael's Transfiguration and the Contest for Color. Color-historical study of the Roman high renaissance (= art studies. Volume 125). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-422-06525-3 (also: Berlin, Free University, dissertation 2002).
  • Andreas Henning: The Sistine Madonna by Raffael. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin et al. 2010, ISBN 978-3-422-07010-3 .
  • Andreas Henning, Arnold Nesselrath (ed.): Heavenly shine. Raffael, Dürer and Grünewald paint the Madonna. Prestel, Munich et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-7913-5185-8 (exhibition catalog).
  • Theodor Hetzer : The Sistine Madonna. Limited special print. Urachhaus publishing house, Stuttgart 1991.
  • Michael Ladwein (Ed.): Raphael's Sistine Madonna. Literary evidence from two centuries. 2nd, completely revised and expanded edition. Pforte-Verlag, Dornach 2004, ISBN 3-85636-159-6 .
  • Andreas Prater, Beyond and This Side of the Curtain. Comments on Raphael's “Sistine Madonna” as a religious work of art. In: Munich Yearbook of Fine Arts . 42, 1991, pp. 117-13 (?).
  • Marielene Putscher: Raphael's Sistine Madonna. The work and its effect. 2 volumes (Vol. 1: text volume. Volume 2: 195 sheets (in a folder)). Hopfer, Tübingen 1955 (at the same time: Hamburg Univ. Diss., November 1, 1955)
  • Michael Rohlmann: Raphael's Sistine Madonna. In: Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana Vol. 30, 1995, ISSN  0940-7855 , pp. 221–248.
  • Emil Schaeffer: Raphael's Sistine Madonna as an experience for posterity, 2nd edition, Dresden 1955.
  • Harald Schwaetzer, Stefan Hasler, Elena Filippi: Raphael's Sistine Madonna. A vision in dialogue. Aschendorff, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-402-12969-2 .
  • Michael Viktor Schwarz, Visual Media in the Christian Cult. Case studies from the 13th to 16th centuries , Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002.
  • Giorgio Vasari : Lives of the most distinguished painters, sculptors and builders, from Cimabue to 1567. Volume 3, section 1. Accompanied and edited by Ludwig von Schorn with the most important comments by the previous editors as well as with more recent corrections and evidence . Cotta, Stuttgart et al. 1843 (reprint reissued and introduced by Julian Kliemann. Translation by Ludwig Schorn and Ernst Förster. Werner, Worms 1988, ISBN 3-88462-057-6 ).
  • Angelo Walther : Raffael, the Sistine Madonna. 2nd, revised edition. Seemann, Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-86502-100-X .
  • Eugenio Gazzola, Fabio Milana (a cura di), Gloria dell'assente. La Madonna per San Sisto di Piacenza 1754-2004 , Vicolo del Pavone, Piacenza, 2004.
  • Eugenio Gazzola, La Madonna Sistina di Raffaello - Storia e destino di un quadro , Quodlibet, Macerata, 2013.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nicola Kuhn in: Der Tagesspiegel No. 21343 of May 26, 2012, Appearance for the Queen, Dresden celebrates the 500th birthday of Raphael's Sistine Madonna page 27
  2. ↑ a b Kult um bored angels , sueddeutsche.de, May 26, 2012
  3. ↑ The purchase in 1754 ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , skd.museum, accessed: January 18, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blog.skd.museum
  4. ↑ The timeless thirst for beauty ( Memento from October 31, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), schwaebische-post.de, August 3, 2005
  5. ↑ The purchase in 1754 ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , skd.museum, accessed: January 18, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blog.skd.museum
  6. ↑ A cult picture becomes 500 , 3sat.de, May 25, 2012
  7. ↑ Raphael's cult image turns 500: Special exhibition on the Sistine Madonna in Dresden ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , lvz-online.de, May 29, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lvz-online.de
  8. ↑ murrer-rahmen.de: Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. Raffael, Sistine Madonna, 1512/13 Workshop report on the production of the new frame in 2012, accessed on May 5, 2020
  9. ↑ Moz.de: New frame and new glass for “Sistine Madonna” for the 500th , article from February 29, 2012, accessed on May 5, 2020
  10. ↑ Harald Schwaetzer, Stefan Hasler, Elena Filippi: Raphael's Sistine Madonna. A vision in dialogue. 2012, p. 28 ff.
  11. ↑ Henning: The Sistine Madonna by Raffael. 2010, p. 7.
  12. ↑ Harald Schwaetzer, Stefan Hasler, Elena Filippi: Raphael's Sistine Madonna. A vision in dialogue. 2012, especially Chapter V.
  13. ↑ No. 73 Friedrich Nietzsche KSA Volume 2, p. 585
  14. ↑ Michael Viktor Schwarz, Visual Media in the Christian Cult. Case studies from the 13th to 16th centuries , Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, pp. 173–215.
  15. ↑ Andreas Prater: Beyond and this side of the curtain. Comments on Raphael's “Sistine Madonna” as a religious work of art . In: Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst , 42, 1991, pp. 117–136.
  16. ↑ K.-H. Weber: The Sistine Madonna. In: Maltechnik-Restauro 90 No. 4, 1984, pp. 9-28.
  17. ↑ Raphael, Sistine Madonna at ColourLex
  18. ↑ Armin Sattler: The Posterboys of the Renaissance , May 26, 2012, orf.at
  19. ↑ Press office of the SPSG: The Orangery Palace in Sanssouci Park. Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation (SPSG), archived from the original on November 5, 2013 ; Retrieved November 5, 2013 .
  20. ↑ Royal Palaces: The Orangery Palace in Sanssouci Park , Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation (SPSG), www.spsg.de, accessed on November 5, 2013
  21. ↑ Zenta Mauriņa Dostoyevsky. Shaper and seeker of God. Memmingen 1997, p. 112.
  22. ↑ Man first , Peter Schallenberg, January 11, 2011, accessed December 24, 2013
  23. ^ Reprint of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for the exhibition from May 26 to August 26, 2012

Web links

Commons : Sistine Madonna  album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: The Sistine Madonna in the catalog of the Königliche Gemäldegalerie zu Dresden (1887)  - sources and full texts
Wikisource: Madonna Sistina, sonnet by Julius Hübner, illustrated with an etching by Hugo Bürkner  - sources and full texts
Wikisource: The Madonna of St. Sixtus, in: Steel engraving collection of the finest paintings in the Dresden Gallery (approx. 1851)  - sources and full texts