Marriage of Mary (Raffael)

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Marriage of Mary (Raffael)
Marriage of Mary
Raphael , 1504
oil on wood
170 × 117 cm
Pinacoteca di Brera , Milan
detail

The Marriage of Mary is a painting by Raphael . In the literature it is also called the Marriage of Mary , common in Italy and often found in art historical depictions is the name Sposalizio . It was created in the Renaissance style at the beginning of the 16th century. The picture is considered Raphael's first masterpiece, with which he surpassed his teacher Perugino . It is executed with oil paint on a wooden panel in the format 120.6 × 174 cm and ends in an arc in the upper part. It is surrounded by an irregular, approx. 3 cm wide wooden edge, which was covered by the fold of the frame strip. The painted area is 113.2 × 168.2 cm.

The painting has been in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan since 1815 .

Emergence

Raphael, who was only 21 when the painting was made, inherited the workshop of his father Giovanni Santi at the age of eleven and was a pupil of Perugino from around 1499 to 1504 . During this phase he was influenced by artists such as Luciano da Laurana and Melozzo da Forlì . In addition, he probably had contact with Pinturicchio ; However, it is unclear whether this also influenced his painting. The "Marriage of Mary" is the third picture after Christ on the Cross (today in London ) and the Coronation of Mary (today in the Vatican ), in which a separation of his painting style from Peruginos can be established. It was only slowly, however, that Raffael found his own style, which can be distinguished from the Perugino school.

Around the same time, or at least shortly before, Perugino created his own portrayal of the subject, the Marriage of the Virgin . Because of the same motif and the same approach on the one hand and the different details on the other, it can be understood how Raphael gradually found and developed his own way. He originally created the work for a church in Città di Castello near Perugia as one of three altarpieces that had been ordered there by different religious orders.

The motif

Perugino's painting by (Sposalizio della Vergine) 1502 was probably the model

The apocryphal proto-gospel of James reports on the marriage of Mary .

“When she was twelve years old, the priests met and said, 'Look, now Mary is twelve years old in the temple of the Lord. So what should we do with her so that she does not defile the sanctuary of the Lord our God? ' And the priests said to the high priest, 'You are standing at the Lord's altar of burnt offering. Go in and pray for her! And whatever God the Lord will show you, we want to do. ' The priest went into the holy of holies in the robe with the twelve bells and prayed for them. And behold, an angel of the Lord was there and said, Zaccharias, Zaccharias, go out and gather the widowers of the people together. Everyone should carry a staff with them, and to whom the Lord God gives a sign, his wife she should be '. Heralds came all over Judea, and the trumpet of the Lord sounded, and, behold, they all came running. But Joseph put the ax aside and went to the meeting. And when they came, they went to the priest with their staffs. The priest took the wands from them and went into the temple and prayed. When he finished his prayer, he took the sticks and went out and gave them back to them. But there was no sign of any. But Joseph got the last staff. And behold, a dove came out of the staff and sat on Joseph's head. Then said the priest: 'Joseph, Joseph, the Lord's Virgin is assigned to you. Take them into your care! ' Josef replied: 'I already have sons and I am an old man, but she is a young woman. I will be a mockery of the sons of Israel! ' But the priest said: 'Joseph, fear the Lord your God, and think of what God did to Datan , Abiram and Korach, how the earth was divided and all devoured because of their contradiction. And now be careful, Joseph, that this may not happen to your house too! ' And Joseph fearfully took them into his care. "

The Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine took up the theme of the Marriage of Mary again. The ring that Mary had conceived by Josef will, according to tradition in San Lorenzo, who, Cathedral of Perugia , are held, also therefore representations were this thread in painting Umbria quite frequently.

The representation

The temple of Bramante was built around the same time

The basic composition of the painting is based on the central perspective, the vanishing point is in the two open doors of the temple in the background. The wedding takes place on a square in front of the temple, in the background a spacious, hilly and wooded landscape can be seen. The two groups on the left and right of the bride and groom are painted in a semicircular representation and thus repeat the semicircle of the front temple facade in the opposite sense. To the left of Mary, five of the seven virgins are shown who grew up with her in the temple; the right group shows the rejected suitors. The couple is shown at the moment of the handover of the ring, the ring is exactly in the middle of the painting. According to the oath rite, Joseph does not wear shoes. The only figure in the picture that is shown in one movement is the unsuccessful applicant to the right of Josef: he breaks his baton at his knee out of disappointment about his rejection. The picture of the women's group on the left still follows the traditions of the Perugino school. With the right group and in the representation as a whole, however, Raffael already went his own way. The representation as a whole is considered to be “worked with a veil of melancholy”.

The temple in the background

Particular attention is paid to the temple in the background. Its resemblance to the Temple of Bramante in the courtyard of the Church of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome , either a short time before or at the same time, is remarkable. It is not known whether Raphael knew this himself; What is certain, however, is that he adopted the motif of a domed central building from antiquity, which has now been rediscovered, and which gained new importance in its time. Raffael signed his work on the front of the temple on the architrave of the middle segment with "RAPHAEL URBINAS" - Raphael came from Urbino - and dated it further down in the spandrels of the arch lintel with "M" on the left and "DIIII" on the right, that is in Roman Spelling the year 1504.

Wolfgang Braunfels comments on this painting: “With the arrangement of the figures, their relationship to the temple in the upper half of the picture, the rhythmic, again perspective order, but above all with the style that dominates the whole, that new area between early and High Renaissance, which otherwise only Giorgione achieved at the same time with the same precision of colors and figures . "

reception

Elia Volpi: Raffael shows Fra Tiferno the painting “The Marriage of Mary in the Sacristy of S. Francesco” (around 1880), whereabouts unknown

In 1622 the Perugesian scholar Monsignor Giovanni Battista Lauri (1579–1629) visited Raphael's painting in the church of S. Francesco in Città di Castello and found the strong resemblance to Perugino's marriage . In its depiction of the ring ritual by the high priest in the temple in Jerusalem, the motif manifests a connection between the contemporary sacrament of marriage and the old Jewish tradition. The Italian history painter and art collector Elia Volpi (1858-1938) recorded a viewing of the painting in the summer of 1621 by Fra Tiferno in a painting. Raphael, in a red and black costume, stands in the center of the picture, to his right, in front of the easel, a courtier with a fur trimmed doublet and blue tights. The left side is occupied by the seated Fra Tiferno, who is surrounded by three Benedictine monks in black robes . The 94 × 132 cm painting is inscribed elia volpi Citta di Castello at the lower right and dated 1881 .

The picture in music

Franz Liszt composed the piano piece Sposalizio (Marriage of the Virgin, a painting by Raphael) in 1858, which was inspired by this picture and bears its name. Liszt saw the picture on his trip to Italy in 1837/38 in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. Liszt's composition is part of the Années de pèlerinage piano cycle . Deuxième année: Italie.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Zuffi, The Renaissance - Art, Architecture, History, Masterpieces , p. 209
  2. ^ Jörg Traeger: Renaissance and Religion. The Art of Faith in the Age of Raphael . CH Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-40642801-0 , p. 277.
  3. ^ Zuffi: The Renaissance - Art, Architecture, History, Masterpieces , p. 208.
  4. ↑ a b c d Max Semrau : The art of the Renaissance in Italy and in the north . 3rd edition, Vol. III from Wilhelm Lübke, Grundriss der Kunstgeschichte , 14th edition, Paul Neff Verlag, Esslingen 1912, p. 286.
  5. ↑ Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance - architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing , p. 330.
  6. ↑ a b c d e Patrick de Rynck: The Art of Reading Pictures - The Old Masters decipher and understand. Parthas Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86601-695-6 , p. 124.
  7. ^ A b Wolfgang Braunfels : Little Italian Art History . DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-7701-1509-0 , p. 338.
  8. ↑ Quoted from: Katharina Ceming , Jürgen Werlitz : Die Verbotenen Evangelien . Piper, Munich and Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-492-25027-6 , pp. 77-79.
  9. ^ Zuffi: The Renaissance - Art, Architecture, History, Masterpieces , p. 209.
  10. ^ Zuffi: The Renaissance - Art, Architecture, History, Masterpieces , p. 209.
  11. ↑ Patrick de Rynck: The Art of Reading Pictures - The Old Masters decipher and understand . Parthas Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86601-695-6 , p. 125.
  12. ↑ Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance - architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing , p. 332.
  13. ↑ Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance - architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing , p. 332.
  14. ↑ Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance - architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing , p. 332.
  15. ^ Zuffi: The Renaissance - Art, Architecture, History, Masterpieces , p. 209.
  16. ↑ Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance - architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing , p. 332.
  17. ↑ Sales , band 774-783, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 1972, p 96; American Federation of Arts, MacMillan, New York, 1945, p. 443.
  18. ↑ Jörg Träger: Renaissance and Religion: The Art of Faith in the Age of Raphael. CH Beck, Munich 1997, pp. 426-427 ( Google Books ).

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