Audio Stop 318

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A woman and two children, all with pale skin and flushed cheeks, sit together in a landscape in this round painting. The woman takes up most of the composition as she sits with her right leg, to our left, tucked under her body. Her other leg, on our right, is bent so the foot rests on the ground, and that knee angles up and out to the side. She wears a rose-pink dress under a topaz-blue robe, and a finger between the pages of a closed book holds her place. Her brown hair is twisted away from her face. She has delicate features and her pink lips are closed. She looks and leans to our left around a nude young boy who half-sits and half-stands against her bent leg. The boy has blond hair and pudgy, toddler-like cheeks and body. The boy reaches his right hand, on our left, to grasp the tall, thin cross held by the second young boy, who sits on the ground next to the pair. This second boy has darker brown hair and wears a garment resembling animal fur. The boy kneels facing the woman and looks up at her and the blond boy. The trio sits on a flat, grassy area in front of a body of water painted light turquoise. Mountains in the deep distance are pale azure blue beneath a nearly clear blue sky.

Raphael

The Alba Madonna, c. 1510

In this “Madonna of Humility,” the Virgin Mary is seated directly on the ground instead of on a heavenly throne or a sumptuous cushion. The artist grouped the figures in a broad, low pyramid, aligning them within a circle in such a way that they not only conform to their space, but dominate it as well. The Roman style Raphael adapted can be seen in the painting’s delicacy of color and mood, with figures draped in rose pink, pale blue, and green, set in an idealized, classical landscape. Despite the serene atmosphere, the Christ Child’s gesture of accepting the cross from John the Baptist is the focus of attention of all three figures, as if they have foreknowledge of Christ’s later sacrifice for humankind.

Read full audio transcript

DAVID BROWN:
“Raphael’s Alba Madonna is one of the true masterpieces of our Italian collection. It was painted when the artist was only 27 years old.”

“Here, the infant Christ, seated on his mother’s lap, reaches out and grasps the little cross which is held up to him by the infant St. John the Baptist. All three figures gaze at the cross, as though, with miraculous foreknowledge, they know about the coming crucifixion. So underlying the playfulness of the children and the serenity of the Virgin here is this poignant subtext about Christ’s future sacrifice.”

“The painting is composed with the most extraordinary formal inventiveness and perfection on this round circular panel or tondo, a format that became popular in Florence in the previous century. Raphael posed his figures so that their shapes echo the tondo’s curves, creating a wonderful sense of balance. And then he surrounded them with this lovely soft green and blue landscape, which contributes to the harmonious mood.”

“The Madonna sits gracefully on the ground in what appears to be an absolutely effortless pose. Yet Raphael’s drawing of a studio model for this picture shows how terribly uncomfortable it must have been to sit with one leg twisted under, leaning forward.”

“But that was part of Raphael’s artistry, the ability to take an extremely complicated, intertwined group of figures and make it all seem perfectly easy and natural. In fact, that apparent ease was considered a virtue at the time – sprezzatura, it was called, which meant avoiding any appearance of effort in making something fine. It was an ideal of courtly behavior. And Raphael embodied it in his art.”

“In fact, this work is a prime example of the High Renaissance style that Raphael created – perfectly melding form and content into the kind of image which would serve as a model for centuries of artists to come.”

EARL A. POWELL III:
Raphael painted his celebrated Alba Madonna around 1510, shortly after arriving in Rome, which was making a bid to surpass Florence as Italy’s major artistic center. He had been summoned by the great Pope and patron Julius II. Julius had Michaelangelo working on the ceiling of his Sistine chapel, while Raphael painted frescoes in the new suite of the papal apartments, called the stanze. During the winter months, however, it was too cold to paint in fresco. So Raphael took advantage of that time to paint easel pictures like this one.

DAVID BROWN:
“The studio model Raphael used for his Madonna was actually a young man. At the time, modeling was not a profession, and it was considered indecent for a woman to pose. If an artist like Raphael wanted to work out a figure, he asked one of his apprentices to sit. So the young man who posed for the drawing in this uncomfortable position was probably somebody who ground colors for Raphael and was learning how to paint himself.”

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