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Raphael: A Passionate Life

a
Miguel Palou Espinosa
a
European Universit y Inst it ut e, Florence
Published online: 10 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Miguel Palou Espinosa , European Review of Hist ory: Revue europeenne
d'hist oire (2014): Raphael: A Passionat e Lif e, European Review of Hist ory: Revue europeenne
d'hist oire, DOI: 10. 1080/ 13507486. 2013. 871940

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 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2013.871940

BOOK REVIEW

Raphael: A Passionate Life, by Antonio Forcellino, translated by Lucinda Byatt, Oxford,

Polity Press, 2012, 299 pp., £25.00, ISBN 978-0745644110

Biography is a genre full of problems, risks and ironies. According to J.C. Davis
(University of East Anglia), many historians regard biography as a limited (even deficient)
analysis of history, even though this genre has become a successful part of the book market
(particularly in Great Britain) in the last decade. Therefore, the value of biography and the
challenges of writing history from a biographical viewpoint are still debated in many
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academic institutions, especially in France and Italy. Despite this problematic situation
and many rejections, biography still offers possibilities to observe personages and history
with new perspectives.
Antonio Forcellino, a talented Italian art restorer (as well as architect and art historian),
wrote in 2006 a renewed biography of one of the most outstanding artists in the
Renaissance, Raffaello Sanzio, recently edited in English by Polity Press. Regarded as one
of the leading authorities on Italian Renaissance art, Forcellino has published many books
on the Italian Renaissance (among others: 1545, Gli ultimi giorni del Rinascimento [2008]
and L’Ultima Passione [2011]) and has already had the experience of writing the life of
another Renaissance giant: Michelangelo and his ‘tormented life’. Here, with Raphael,
Forcellino writes about a ‘passionate life’. As the author claims, while Raphael’s art has
been viewed as the reflection of a rigid etiquette of ‘formal perfection’, ‘spirituality’ and
‘religiosity’, his impressive creativity went beyond those aspects: it actually came as the
result of Raphael’s passionate ‘eros and of a fully gratified life’. Therefore, Forcellino
aims to write the life and art of Raphael as more closely connected to his personal context,
to the history of his patrons and to the personalities who surrounded him, in order to
describe the artistic and social ascent of a ‘prince-artist’.
The book is divided into eight chapters that follow the chronological development of
Raphael’s life, marking the determining steps of his career. The first one, on Raphael’s
childhood, was a challenge for Forcellino due to the scarcity of sources; despite this, the
writer uses this chapter to reassert Giovanni Santi’s (Raphael’s father) role in his son’s
artistic and intellectual training, as well as Giovanni’s position in the Urbino court
providing his son with a social and patronage network. Afterwards, the second and third
chapters describe the real beginning and premature success of Raphael’s artistic career as a
master painter, first in the main cities of Umbria and then in Florence. The remaining five
chapters contain the main stage of Raphael’s life and work, that is, Rome: his first
assignments, his establishment as the main artist of Julius II, his works summoned by Leo
X, his architectural and painted works while he rediscovered ancient Roman art, and the
summit of his career coinciding with his sudden death. Written in a lively and entertaining
style, Forcellino combines the narrative of an epoch of intense political struggles in Italy
during three papacies (Alexander VI [aka Rodrigo Borgia], Julius II and Leo X) with a
detailed analysis of Raphael’s masterpieces and a vivid portrait of the artist’s seductive
and sophisticated personality. Hence, we may find that Raphael not only reached his
position thanks to his innate talent and his perfect technique, but also due to his polite
 2 Book Review

manners, his social skills (his way to find patrons and construct his own network) and his
capacity to accept and overcome any challenge in his career.
Furthermore, I consider the in-depth analysis of Raphael’s masterpieces – using them
as revised sources that provide new reflections on the artist’s life and techniques – as
Forcellino’s main contribution to the history community. Forcellino’s long experience as
restorer affords him a deep understanding of the technical and material aspects in painting.
Consequently, his descriptions are more than a mere interpretation of the image and reveal
fascinating characteristics of Raphael’s capacity and aspiration to innovate: his joining of
old and new techniques with profound thoughts of the Renaissance culture. Aside from
this, Forcellino does not introduce new sources and his book is mainly based on already
published sources. Personally, I would have liked to have seen further research in order to
resolve some aspects of Raphael’s life that remain somewhat superficial.
In addition, the author attempts to reveal the complexity of Raphael’s figure through
his social and intellectual relations. In fact, Raphael reached a higher status than any artist
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could ever have imagined in his period, becoming an important Roman courtier and friend
of many intellectuals and writers. According to Forcellino, his intellectual approach is
perceptible through the solemn portraits (a new intellectual solemnity) that Raphael
painted for these friends, as well as the ‘intellectualisation’ of his work inspired by his
close friendship with Leonardo da Vinci. However, I feel that going deeper into the
intellectual interests of Raphael, which ‘could hardly not have affected his painting’,
would have afforded fascinating facets of Raphael beyond his role as an artist.
Finally, among the many biographies we may find in libraries, this is a worthy and
enjoyable read, addressed to a wide range of readers interested in the visual art of the
Italian Renaissance and its cultural circumstances. Besides his ability to synthesise
contexts, reflections and technical knowledge, Forcellino demonstrates his skills as a
passionate and consummate storyteller revealing the life of a challenging and unique artist
who introduced a new conception of Renaissance art combining sublimity and sensuality,
within an Italian epoch of violence, wealth and eroticism.

Miguel Palou Espinosa

European University Institute, Florence
Miguel.palou@eui.eu
q 2014, Miguel Palou Espinosa
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2013.871940