Conestabile Madonna

Conestabile Madonna

Made in compositional likeness to Raphael’s last painting, Conestabile Madonna, now held in the Hermitage Museum of St Petersburg, the work was originally painted for the Conestabile Della Staffa family of Perugia before it was then gifted to the Russian Tzaress, Maria Alexandrovna in 1871.

This religious tondo painting portrays an intimate moment between Madonna and Child. The Virgin is depicted with a thoughtful expression as she holds the curious Christ who is depicted engaging with the book in her hand. Wearing a red robe and cloaked in her signature blue mantle, Mary is portrayed against the vast yet tranquil landscape, whose snow-capped peaks stretch out beyond the figures.

In 1881, when the painting was moved to canvas, it was discovered that in the original version the Madonna contemplated a pomegranate instead of a book-  a symbol of the Passion, the short period before Jesus’ death as well as resurrection and eternal life often found in devotional paintings of the Virgin and Child. The use of the vertical figures of the Madonna and the horizontal lines of the landscape creates a stability against the round composition. Simultaneously, the gentle bowing of the Madonna’s head and the curving of her hand, as she holds the twisting Christ compliments the circular form.

After Raphael

Raphaello Sanzio da Urbano, commonly known as Raphael was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, who worked in the period of the masters such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. 

Raphael grew up around the craft, with his father Giovanni Santi, being the court painter to Federico da Montefeltro the Duke of Urbino, a small but highly cultured hilltop town in the Italian region of Marche. Upon his father’s death Raphael, aged eleven took over his father’s workshop while simultaneously training in the workshop of Pietro Perugino, becoming a trained master by 1500, aged seventeen.

Raphael, after working for a number of Northern Italian cities in 1508, moved to Rome at the invitation of Pope Julius II to work on the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican. It was in Rome that Raphael began to work as an architect, being commissioned for the new Papal Basilica of St Peter after the death of Bramante.

Raphael was still at the peak of his success when he died in 1520 at the age of 37. 

His work is highly praised for its clarity of form, ease of composition and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur, as revised from classical antiquity, and as first described by biographer Giorgio Vasari was categorised by three phases and subsequent styles. Firstly, his Umbrian years, then a brief period of four years in which he absorbed the styles and tradition of Florence, followed by a triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two popes and their close associates. Raphael was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside of Rome he was mostly known for his collaborative printmaking.

Museums
The National Gallery, London
The Louvre, Paris
Uffizi gallery, Florence
The Metropolitan Museum, New York
Rijksmusum, Amsterdam
Palazzo Pitti, Florence