The Transfiguration is the last painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael. Cardinal Giulio de Medici – who later became Pope Clement VII (in office: 1523–1534) – commissioned the work, conceived as an altarpiece for Narbonne Cathedral in France; Raphael worked on it in the years preceding his death in 1520. The painting exemplifies Raphael's development as an artist and the culmination of his career. Unusually for a depiction of the Transfiguration of Jesus in Christian art, the subject is combined with the next episode from the Gospels (the healing of a possessed boy) in the lower part of the painting. The work is now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana in the Vatican City.
From the late 16th century until the early 20th century, various commentators regarded it as the most famous oil painting in the world.
History of the painting By December 1517, the latest date of commission, Cardinal Giulio de Medici, cousin to Pope Leo X (1513–1521), was also the Pope's vice-chancellor and chief advisor. He had been endowed with the legation of Bologna, the bishoprics of Albi, Ascoli, Worcester, Eger and others. From February 1515, this included the archbishopric of Narbonne. He commissioned two paintings for the cathedral of Narbonne, The Transfiguration of Christ from Raphael and The Raising of Lazarus from Sebastiano del Piombo. With Michelangelo providing drawings for the latter work, Medici was rekindling the rivalry initiated a decade earlier between Michelangelo and Raphael, in the Stanze and Sistine Chapel.
From 11 to 12 December 1516, Michelangelo was in Rome to discuss with Pope Leo X and Cardinal Medici the facade of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence. During this meeting, he was confronted with the commission of The Raising of Lazarus and it was here that he agreed to provide drawings for the endeavour, but not to execute the painting himself. The commission went to Michelangelo's friend Sebastiano del Piombo. As of this meeting the paintings would become emblematic of a paragone between two approaches to painting, and between painting and sculpture in Italian art.
An early modello for the painting, done in Raphael's studio by Giulio Romano, depicted a 1:10 scale drawing for The Transfiguration. Here Christ is shown on Mount Tabor. Moses and Elijah float towards him; John and James are kneeling to the right; Peter is to the left. The top of the model depicts God the Father and a throng of angels. A second modello, done by Gianfrancesco Penni, shows a design with two scenes, as the painting was to develop. This modello is held by the Louvre.
The Raising of Lazarus was unofficially on view by October 1518. By this time Raphael had barely started on his altarpiece. When Sebastiano del Piombo's work was officially inspected in the Vatican by Leo X on Sunday, 11 December 1519, the third Sunday of Advent, The Transfiguration was still unfinished.
Raphael would have been familiar with the final form of The Raising of Lazarus as early as the autumn of 1518, and there is considerable evidence that he worked feverishly to compete, adding a second theme and nineteen figures. A surviving modello for the project, now in the Louvre (a workshop copy of a lost drawing by Raphael's assistant Gianfrancesco Penni) shows the dramatic change in the intended work.
Examination of the final Transfiguration revealed more than sixteen incomplete areas and pentimenti (alterations). An important theory holds that the writings of Blessed Amadeo Menes da Silva was key to the transformation. Amadeo was an influential friar, healer and visionary as well as the Pope's confessor. He was also diplomat for the Vatican State. In 1502, after his death, many of Amadeo's writings and sermons were compiled as the Apocalypsis Nova. This tract was well known to Pope Leo X. Guillaume Briçonnet, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici's predecessor as bishop of Narbonne, and his two sons also consulted the tract as spiritual guide. Cardinal Giulio knew the Apocalypsis Nova and could have influenced the painting's final composition. Amadeo's tract describes the episodes of the Transfiguration and the possessed boy consecutively. The Transfiguration represents a prefiguration of the Last Judgment, and of the final defeat of the Devil. Another interpretation is that the epileptic boy has been cured, thus linking the divinity of Christ with his healing power.
Raphael died on 6 April 1520. For a couple of days afterward, The Transfiguration lay at the head of his catafalque at his house in the Borgo. A week after his death, the two paintings were exhibited together in the Vatican.
While there is some speculation that Raphael's pupil, Giulio Romano, and assistant, Gianfrancesco Penni, painted some of the background figures in the lower right half of the painting, there is no evidence that anyone but Raphael finished the substance of the painting. The cleaning of the painting from 1972 to 1976 revealed that assistants only finished some of the lower left figures, while the rest of the painting is by Raphael himself.
Rather than send it to France, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici retained the picture. In 1523, he installed it on the high altar in the Blessed Amadeo's church of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome, in a frame which was the work of Giovanni Barile (no longer in existence). Giulio ordered Penni a copy of the Transfiguration to take with him to Naples. The final result with slight differences from the original is preserved in the Prado Museum in Madrid. A mosaic copy of the painting was completed by Stefano Pozzi in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City in 1774.
In 1797, during Napoleon Bonaparte's Italian campaign, it was taken to Paris by French troops and installed in the Louvre. Already on 17 June 1794, Napoleon's Committee of Public Instruction had suggested an expert committee accompany the armies to remove important works of art and science for return to Paris. The Louvre, which had been opened to the public in 1793, was a clear destination for the art. On 19 February 1799, Napoleon concluded the Treaty of Tolentino with Pope Pius VI, in which was formalized the confiscation of 100 artistic treasures from the Vatican.
Among the most sought after treasures Napoleons agents coveted were the works of Raphael. Jean-Baptiste Wicar, a member of Napoleon's selection committee, was a collector of Raphael's drawings. Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, another member, had been influenced by Raphael. For artists like Jacques-Louis David, and his pupils Girodet and Ingres, Raphael represented the embodiment of French artistic ideals. Consequently, Napoleon's committee seized every available Raphael. To Napoleon, Raphael was simply the greatest of Italian artists and The Transfiguration his greatest work. The painting, along with the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoön, the Capitoline Brutus and many others, received a triumphal entry into Paris on 27 July 1798, the fourth anniversary of Maximilien de Robespierre's fall.
In November 1798, The Transfiguration was on public display in the Grand Salon at the Louvre. As of 4 July 1801, it became the centrepiece of a large Raphael exhibition in the Grande Galerie. More than 20 Raphaels were on display. In 1810, a famous drawing by Benjamin Zix recorded the occasion of Napoleon and Marie Louise's wedding procession through the Grande Galerie, The Transfiguration on display in the background.
The painting's presence at the Louvre gave English painters like Joseph Farington (on 1 and 6 September 1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (in September 1802) the opportunity to study it. Turner would dedicate the first of his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy to the picture. Farington also reported on others having been to see the picture: Swiss painter Henry Fuseli, for whom it was second at the Louvre only to Titian's The Death of St. Peter Martyr (1530), and English painter John Hoppner. The Anglo-American painter Benjamin West "said that the opinion of ages stood confirmed that it still held the first place". Farington himself expressed his sentiments as follows:
After the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1815, envoys to Pope Pius VII, Antonio Canova and Marino Marini managed to secure The Transfiguration (along with 66 other pictures) as part of the Treaty of Paris. By agreement with the Congress of Vienna, the works were to be exhibited to the public. The original gallery was in the Borgia Apartment in the Apostolic Palace. After several moves within the Vatican, the painting now resides in the Pinacoteca Vaticana.
Reception
The reception of the painting is well documented. Between the year 1525 and 1935, at least 229 written sources can be identified that describe, analyse, praise or criticise The Transfiguration.
The first descriptions of the painting after Raphael's death in 1520 called The Transfiguration already a masterpiece, but this status evolved until the end of the 16th century. In his notes of a travel to Rome in 1577, the Spanish humanist Pablo de Céspedes called it the most famous oil painting in the world for the first time.Dohe, Leitbild Raffael, p. 49. The painting would preserve this authority for more than 300 years. It was acknowledged and repeated by many authors, like the connoisseur François Raguenet, who analysed Raphael's composition in 1701. In his opinion, its outline drawing, the effect of light, the colours and the arrangement of the figures made The Transfiguration the most perfect painting in the world.
Jonathan Richardson Senior and Junior dared to criticise the overwhelming status of The Transfiguration, asking if this painting could really be the most famous painting in the world. They criticised that the composition was divided into an upper and a lower half that would not correspond to each other. Also the lower half would draw too much attention instead of the upper half, while the full attention of the viewer should be paid to the figure of Christ alone. This criticism did not diminish the fame of the painting, but provoked counter-criticism by other connoisseurs and scholars. For the German-speaking world, it was the assessment by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that prevailed. He interpreted the upper and the lower half as complementary parts. This assessment was quoted by many authors and scholars during the 19th century and thus the authority of Goethe helped to save the fame of The Transfiguration.Dohe, Leitbild Raffael, p. 65.
During the short period of time the painting spent in Paris, it became a major attraction to visitors, and this continued after its return to Rome, then placed in the Vatican museums. Mark Twain was one of many visitors and he wrote in 1869: "I shall remember The Transfiguration partly because it was placed in a room almost by itself; partly because it is acknowledged by all to be the first oil painting in the world; and partly because it was wonderfully beautiful."
In the early 20th century, the fame of the painting rapidly diminished and soon The Transfiguration lost its denomination as the most famous painting in the world. A new generation of artists did not accept Raphael as an artistic authority anymore. Copies and reproductions were no longer in high demand. While the complexity of the composition had been an argument to praise the painting until the end of the 19th century, viewers were now repelled by it. The painting was felt to be too crowded, the figures to be too dramatic and the whole setting to be too artificial. In contrast, other paintings like the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci were much easier to recognise and did not suffer from the decline of the overwhelming status of Raphael as an artistic example.Dohe, Leitbild Raffael, pp. 220-224. Thus The Transfiguration is a good example for the changeability of the fame of an artwork, that may last for centuries but may also decline in just a short period.
Reproductions