THE MISSING POPE in RAPHAEL'S DISPUTA

THE MISSING POPE in RAPHAEL'S DISPUTA

As we have seen in the last blog entry, Raphael's painting about THEOLOGY, the DISPUTA,
in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican residence in Rome, carried out between 1509 and 1511, is a painting that depicts men interested in theological discussions. (Only one woman appears, Mary, the mother of Christ, in Heaven.)

As we pointed out in our identification of the religious figures in the lower half, many are men from centuries prior to the Cinquecento (1500's):
on the RIGHT:

AMBROSE, AUGUSTINE, AQUINAS, BONAVENTURE, DANTE, and SAVONAROLA

on the LEFT:

GREGORY the GREAT, JEROME, FRANCIS,all of whom died before Raphael and Julius II were born.
          As we have also indicated, the painter includes contemporaries as well and people who died
in the QUATTROCENTO, (the 1400's,) some of whom Julius II, the patron, would have known.
on the LEFT:

Bramante, Francesco Maria della Rovere, (scroll over) Raphael himself, Julius II as Gregory the Great,

on the right:

                                                             Pope Innocent VIII, and Pope Sixtus IV.
                    
FOUR POPES from Julius II's lifetime are represented in this image, three in white and gold tiaras:
Next to the artist, Raphael, is the Pope Raphael worked for before Julius, Pope Pius III, the man crowned Pope in Pinturicchio's painting in Siena:

 

Raphael looks out at the viewer while Pius III looks up to heaven. The bearded man with his back to
us functions as the viewer, facing in the same direction so that we look at the artist and his patrons.
In front of Raphael, as he is standing in the group, is another pope, with a white and gold tiara.
That is ostensibly Gregory the Great, but it is a portrait of Julius II without a beard.

Raphael later paints this bearded portrait, 1511-1512; we can date that later portrait from the beard

because he grew a beard in mourning for the French invasion of Italy and did not shave until

the French had been expelled from the peninsula, from June 27, 1511 to March, 1512.

In the DISPUTA and in Raphael's later portrait Julius is much aged from the portrait we have seen

done of him by Melozzo da Forli around 1477, where Julius is anxious to please his uncle, Sixtus IV, who was then Pope:

THREE POPES in the DISPUTA appear with white and gold tiaras:  Julius, Innocent VIII, and Sixtus IV.

Chronologically backwards in time these popes are Pontifex Maximus:
JULIUS -                POPE from 1503-1513

INNOCENT VIII - POPE from 1484-1492
SIXTUS IV -          POPE from 1471-84

Who are the POPES between Innocent and Julius?  1492-1503? Of course we have mentioned one:
POPE PIUS III, who was Pope in 1503 before Julius, but his papacy lasted only 26 days.
He appears next to Raphael with a mitre, but he does not wear the tiara here because he was
Pope for so little time.

There is one other pope in the years between Innocent and Julius.
The missing POPE who fills in the period from 1492 to 1503 in the papal lineup and was
POPE from 1492 to 1503, was ALEXANDER VI, a Spaniard named RODRIGO BORGIA.

His profile is so distinctive that we would easily identify him in the fresco of the DISPUTA.
BUT HE IS NOT THERE!

not on the left with Pope Pius III and Pope Julius II:

nor on the right with Pope Innocent VIII and Pope Sixtus IV:

NOT THERE! PURPOSELY WIPED OUT OF HISTORY!
In ancient times when an Emperor or the Roman Senate wanted to erase the memory of a predecessor, the process was called "damnatio memoriae," a cursing of the memory. Bas-reliefs with the image of the predecessor would be damaged, sculpted or painted portraits of the person destroyed, the name of the predecessor wiped out of inscriptions on monuments. Here are two examples, one painted, the other a name in an inscription:
Geta's image is erased in a portrait of Septimius Severus and his wife and two sons; when one of the sons, Caracalla, becomes Emperor, he has the image of his brother, Geta, wiped off the painting:

When the Emperor Commodus dies, the Roman Senate declares a "damnatio memoriae" of his name; in a German museum of Roman history exists an inscription in which CO has been eliminated from

the inscription, then reinscribed by modern restorers:

Effectively, in the Raphael painting, Pope Julius II institutes a "damnatio memoriae" for Pope Alexander VI. 

Julius says in writing on the first day of his papacy,
"I will not live in the same rooms as the Borgias lived. He [Alexander VI] desecrated the Holy Church as none before. He usurped the papal power by the devil's aid, and I forbid under the pain of excommunication anyone to speak or think of Borgia again. His name and memory must be forgotten. It must be crossed out of every document and memorial. His reign must be obliterated. All paintings made of the Borgias or for them must be covered over with black crepe. All the tombs of the Borgias must be opened and their bodies sent back to where they belong—to Spain." (Nigel Hawthorne, p. 219.)
          The decoration of the Stanza della Segnatura by Raphael is part of Julius II's plan to write
his predecessor out of history, and theological history in particular. His anger with Borgia is partly
because Borgia had used the papacy for personal power and had no concern for celibacy in that role.
But Julius II's real animosity stems from the fact that Borgia had made Julius wait until 1503 to be Pope.
Julius had expected, as the nephew of Sixtus IV, to be able to enjoy the papacy when Sixtus died in 1484; but 
he thought that if he helped Innocent VIII take power, he would be rewarded when Innocent died in 1492; instead, Rodrigo Borgia paid off a sufficient number of cardinals to be able to take the reins of the papacy himself in 1492, leaving Julius to fume enough to travel to France to seek the aid of the French king in reprisal. Borgia is Pope from 1492 to 1503 as Pope Alexander VI.
           By 1503, and after again having waited the 26 days of Pius III's papacy, Julius was ready to assume
the papal throne. His papacy was one in which Julius suppported artists like Michelangelo, whom he recruited in 1508 to paint the Sistine Ceiling and to carve statues for his tomb, and Raphael, whom he recruited in 1509 to decorate the walls of his personal apartments in the floor right above the Borgia's apartments in the Vatican. Julius was ready for the papacy.
          His own personal historical "REVISIONISM" is painted for all to see in the fresco of the DISPUTA.
All the viewer has to do is count the POPES.

           Raphael, though, seems a bit worried by the omission.

The Try-Out audition for Raphael's Disputa

The Try-Out Audition for Raphael's Disputa
 

In 1505 Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) (1483-1520) was still only 22 years old and working as an apprentice for his teacher in Perugia, Perugino.  By 1509, four years later, he is a major player in the most important decorative program in Italy after the Sistine Ceiling, the frescoes of the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican apartments in Rome.  How does he appear as if from nowhere to become one of the three greatest artists of the Late Renaissance?  Up to now, scholars have speculated that he joined Pinturicchio in his decoration of the Chapel of the Piccolomini in Siena, and learned a great deal from helping to paint the cycle of the Life of Aeneas Sylvias Piccolomini (1502-3) there. But the
Pope for whom that was painted, Pope Pius III, died in 1503 after one of the shortest papacies in history, 26 days, so the work begun there is terminated with Pius' death and Raphael has to find other
employment. It is certainly true that the Sienese program prepared him for wall frescoes and he is
depicted in those frescoes himself, arm akimbo, as though Pinturicchio were aware of Raphael's incipient talent.

 

Scholars have talked about Raphael's going to Florence in the year 1504-5 and being influenced by Leonardo and the Mona Lisa. How does he jump from being just a helper, albeit such a crucial one that Pinturicchio paints him twice, to becoming a full-fledged painter in the Vatican?  
            If you look at two of his works in 1504-05, they still seem to be painted in the mode of Perugino, his teacher: the Mond Crucifixion and the Marriage of the Virgin

In these panels, the faces are sweet and pink-cheeked like Perugino's faces, the figures are slender
and seem to bear very little weight, the hair, banners, and staffs are ribbon-like. The figures stand in a landscape that appears infinite and all action is concentrated in the foreground.

But by 1505 he is back in Perugia and the painting we see there in the Cappella di San Severo
shows an artist who has broken from the style of his teachers, Perugino and Pinturicchio, and
is emerging as his own man.

The fresco that he paints in the chapter room of that Chapel is, in retrospect, a TRY-OUT fresco for the pictorial arrangement of figures in space that he produces in the fresco of the DISPUTA in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. Just as you can see the old man in photos of the child, and the child in the photos of the old man, we can see in looking at a comparison of the two works, the development of ideas that are child-like in Perugia, and grow and mature in the Stanza.
          What is this work in Perugia that is relatively unknown?

It is in the chapter house of the Chapel of San Severo, Cappella di San Severo, a room used for prayer by the monks of the establishment. The fresco takes up one wall of the room and a bench on the wall opposite allows the contemplation of the work or the reading of Scriptures.

Raphael signs and dates the work 1505 in the lower left section of the painting:
RAPHAEL DE VRBINO D. OCTAVI/ANO STEPHANI VOLTERRANO PRIO/RE SANCTAM TRINITATEM ANGE/LOS ASTANTES SANCTOSQVE / PINXIT / A.D. MDV. But the lower right inscription suggests that the work is finished by another artist by 1521. Since fresco painters begin work at the top of the wall and work down, we would assume the upper half of the fresco to be by Raphael, even if the style evidence didn't already indicate that. The subject is the Trinity up in heaven with angels and saints, and other saints appear in an enclosure down on earth that includes a niche containing a terracotta Madonna and Child.

Here is the painting with all the identifications:

While some of the figures may remind us of Perugino, particularly the two flying angels with
hands in prayer next to Christ, the saints seated on the clouds in a half-circle who converse with
one another are most definitely painted by the new-style Raphael. These saints, Maurus, Placidus, Benedict on the left and Romuald, Benedict Martyr, and John(damaged) on the right all seem to bear weight and have volume and body under their drapery. They turn in natural 3/4 views to converse with one another and seem to be actual live figures with foreshortened limbs, as opposed to the stiff scarecrow saints down below them. While those stiff standing saints and the Christ figure may be by another artist, the small angel above the head of St. Benedict on the left has musculature that reminds us of later Raphael children, such as the two boys (Christ and John the Baptist) in the Uffizi Madonna of the Goldfinch (1505-06.)

 

How is the whole Perugia fresco a try-out for the Disputa then? In the San Severo fresco Raphael is playing with two different levels, two tiers, to represent the heavenly realm and the earthly realm. His saints above sit on benches similar to the bench in the room itself; they contemplate the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in much the same way that the monks in the room would. The saints hold objects that identify them, but since some of them are less well-known, Raphael also writes their names below their bodies to identify them. The spatial arrangement of the figures in a semi-circle around the Godhead in the heavenly realm is almost identical to the compositional arrangement of the saints set up in the Disputa in the Vatican.
                                     

In both works instead of the action being placed entirely in the foreground, the space of the upper tier gradually recedes in the cloud formation and the figures take up natural positions in that gradual recession so that the action is not crowded in the front of the picture plane. The main figures in both are in the center and represent the Trinity in both cases. The saints turn in toward the Trinity in both
paintings and they hold attributes in both that identify them. The two-tier system for heaven and earth
is repeated in the Disputa in roughly the same manner as it is composed in the San Severo scene a semi-circle of seated sacred figures who converse.
       Raphael begins work in Rome at the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura (the Official Signing Room) for Pope Julius II in 1509 and works on it until 1511. On the ceiling of that room were painted four women who represented four IDEAS -THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, POETRY, and LAW. The four wall frescoes in that room are displays of people from history and myth concerned with each of those areas of human knowledge.

 Thus, the DISPUTA is meant to be a documentation of famous thinkers about THEOLOGY. Disputa refers to a discussion about TWO important religious tenets of Christians: the WAFER on the altar as a symbol of the body of Christ in Christian belief and the TRINITY, the idea that God is tripartite (FATHER, SON, and HOLY SPIRIT.) All of the men painted on the wall have some interest in the discussion and they come from many time periods in theological history. The artist included portraits of contemporaries and maybe even himself. Here is an enlarged LABELLED DISPUTA

Scroll to the right to see the whole.

The heavenly arrangements of saints begun in San Severo is carried out with supreme confidence in
the Disputa. Instead of just Christian saints, Raphael includes figures from the Old Testament
in the upper realms:
On the left Adam and David converse with St. Peter and St. John the Evangelist:

On the right Abraham and Moses are engaged with St. Paul and St. James Minor and St. Lawrence:

The seated figures gather on a bench that can't be seen in this representation, but the arrangement of
heavenly figures in a semi-circle holding their attributes is very much like the setup in the San Severo

fresco, Christ and the Holy Spirit in the center. 

Even Christ raises his arms in exactly the same gesture in San Severo and the Disputa.

 

In the lower half of the Vatican fresco, Raphael has expanded the world of his saints out to an infinite

landscape. He has extended it to men who have thought about theological questions or who have been involved in religious constructions. Thus he places on the right in the earthly realm Dante who died in 1321, Savonarola (d. 1498), very near Sixtus IV, who died in 1484, along with St. Thomas Aquinas(labelled by Raphael,d.1274) and Bonaventure(labelled by Raphael, d.1274), as well as two FATHERS OF THE CHURCH, Augustine (d.430A.D.)and Ambrose (labelled by Raphael, d. 397). 

 

On the left he includes himself, his friend Bramante who was the first architect of the new

St. Peter's, St. Francis (who died in 1226), and the two other FATHERS OF THE CHURCH, 

GREGORY the GREAT (labelled by Raphael, d.604) perhaps a portrait of Julius II, and JEROME, translator of the Bible (labelled by Raphael, died 420.)

The men look as though they are seeking out answers in books, answers to the question about how
the bread on the altar can become the body of Christ in Heaven, answers to the question of how God can manifest in three forms. Their gestures suggest they are all involved in a conversation about these important Catholic beliefs. Some of them look at or gesture towards the altar and the wafer held in the monstrance on the altar and some point to or look up at the vision of the Trinity:

For Raphael and Julius the conversations about the meaning of Christ's words at the Last Supper or  those about God, his Son, and the Holy Spirit are discussions which continue over the centuries and engage many of the most interesting religious minds. The inclusion of figures such as Adam and Moses does not mean these Old Testament icons actually had considered the issue of transubstantiation or that they were Christian believers, but they are included in order to convey the idea that from the beginning of time (Adam) God has intended to give his only Son in sacrifice for people's sins. The continuum of discussions about religion extends to all of Judeo-Christian history.
            The contemplation of the images of the Trinity and the saints who believed
in the Trinity are represented in both San Severo and the Disputa. In the Disputa Raphael has enlarged the scene from a gathering of local saints to a gathering of writers and thinkers from theological history up to his lifetime, a display of men concerned about FAITH. The San Severo image is meant to be used as a stimulus for Perugian monks whose faith is chosen. This is the only image they would have confronted in the room. The Disputa, on the other hand, is placed in a room
opposite the SCHOOL OF ATHENS, a painting where the great minds of PHILOSOPHY are displayed in an architectural setting.

Raphael's San Severo piece is his preparatory fresco for the arrangement in the Disputa, but the artist

who painted the SCHOOL of ATHENS was prepared for more than religious conversation.

Gone are the pink-cheeked Perugino faces, gone the ribbon-like bands of scrolls, all replaced with serious, weighty figures whose life-like stances and gestures set in realistic landscape and light
provide a full picture of Western thought in ideal human forms.