Draw an imaginary straight line from the boss in
the soffit of the arch through the middle of the Janus-head of Prudence.
It will accurately bisect the central group, composed of this figure and
her two attendant genii, will pass through her elevated left knee, the
centre of a system of curves, and the other end of it will strike the
top of the post or mullion that divides the window opening into two
parts.
[Illustration: Plate 16.--Raphael. "Jurisprudence."
In the Vatican.]
This single room, the Camera della Segnatura, marks the brief blossoming
time of Raphael's art, an art consummate in science yet full of a
freshness and spontaneity--the dew still upon it--as wonderful as its
learning. The master himself could not duplicate it. He tried for
Venetian warmth of color in the "Mass of Bolsena" (Pl. 17) and
experimented with tricks of illumination in the "Deliverance of Peter"
(Pl. 18), and in these two compositions, struck out new and admirable
ways of filling pierced lunettes. The balancing, in the one, of the
solitary figure of the pope against the compact group of seven
figures--a group that has to be carried up above the curved screen in
order to counteract the importance given to Julius by his isolation and
by the greater mass of his supporting group below--is a triumph of
arrangement; and here, again, it is notable that the bleeding wafer, the
necessary centre of interest, is situated on a straight line drawn
diagonally from the keystone of the arch to the centre of the window
head, and almost exactly half-way between these two points, while the
great curve of the screen leads to it from either side.
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