Art - The Sistine Madonna by Raphael

"This painting is considered one of the most important works of Western civilization...This was the last painting that the artist Raphael executed completely by his own hand, and it was his crowning achievement.  He died six years later, at the age of thirty-seven.  To honor his late uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, Pope Julius II commissioned this image in 1512 to be hung in the Benedictine basilica of San Sisto in Piacenza, a foundation that had long been patronized by the pope's family.  The martyr Pope Saint Sixtus II (whose name is memorialized in the Canon of the Mass and gives this painting its informal title, The Sistine Madonna) was the foundation's patron saint, and the basilica proudly guarded the relics of another early Christian martyr, the virgin Saint Barbara - hence the two heavenly figures that accompany the Madonna and Child in the composition, who were deliberately included to reflect the basilica's pride of place...

The Virgin Mary holds her divine Son in such a way that their bodies are intertwined, his limbs curved round her supporting hands.  Her veil billows away from her face as if it were a sail, creating a larger circle that frames both Mother and Child...

The artist has composed the painting in such a way that it appears to be a peek into paradise. The stage-like setting which parted curtains supports this effect.  While the disturbing and haunting stares of both Virgin and Child hold the center of the painting with a gripping command...

Recent scholarship has discovered that inside the basilica the painting was designed to hang opposite a scene of the crucifixion.  Thus the look of fear that envelops the infant Jesus reveals a natural human response to the sight of pain and death...

The virgin's cheek brushes against her Child's forehead in a protective and consoling gesture, yet her eyes betray a hint of that sadness that characterizes the Mater Dolorosa, sharing in the suffering of her Son's destiny.

The figure of Pope Saint Sixtus points to the cross outside this canvas in support of that destiny. His papal tiara placed at his feet, he glances up toward the Child and rests his left hand on his breast, as if to include himself as one of the many martyrs who embraced death for the sake of the kingdom...

Opposite the pontiff, Saint Barbara kneels with her head bowed in serene dignity...the visual shorthand that enabled medieval viewers to recognize a saint by an object drawn from her legend has been marginalized here in this masterpiece of the High Renaissance.  Raphael has tucked Barbara's hagiographic attribute - that tower in which she was imprisoned by her pagan father (giving rise to the fairy tale of Rapunzel) - behind a sweep of curtain, giving the viewer just a hint of her identity..." (by Fr. Michael Morris, O.P. - Except from Magnificat August 2015, Vol 17, No.6)


For devotional items related to the Catholic Saints please visit Lynn's Timeless Treasures 
___
Art The Madonna Standing on the Clouds (The Sistine Madonna) Raphael