What does this picture tell me? «Sistine Madonna» by Raphael

«We enter into dialogue with the divine»

Marina Khaikina, art critic

“Through the half-open curtain, Mary, with the Child in her arms, descends to meet us through the clouds, in which cherubim are guessed. Madonna looks directly at the viewer, and we meet her eyes. The feeling of movement is conveyed by the folds of the dress, which sway in the wind. At the bottom of the canvas is a marble parapet, from behind which two angels peer out thoughtfully — the most replicated and famous image of the Renaissance. It is believed that Rafael saw these two boys on the street, dreamily frozen in front of a bakery window, and transferred them to his canvas. In the figure of St. Sixtus (on the left) you can recognize Pope Julius II, and in St. Barbara (on the right) — his niece Giulia Orsini.

The abundance of air gives a feeling of freedom and lightness, which Raphael accompanies a solemn moment. The direct connection between the earthly and the heavenly, the connection of views is emphasized by the theatricality of the composition: we see the curtain, the cornice on which it is attached, all this looks like a stage where the action takes place. The main thing is the moment of the divine manifestation, the moment that the artist has the right to depict, and the viewer has the right to participate in it. Here Raphael had no predecessors. Previously, artists depicted one or two figures that pointed to the Madonna and thereby involved the viewer in the picture. Here everything is decided differently. Maria herself looks into our eyes, talks to us, she is not somewhere, she is here. It is not about how believers imagine the divine, but about its appearance and dialogue with it. Only a Renaissance artist, a creator who considered himself equal to God, could decide to embody such a dialogue. That is why Michelangelo dared to portray how God and man are connected by an inextricable thread, Leonardo placed Jesus on a par with the monks eating, and Raphael looked into the eyes of the Madonna.

• What does this picture tell me? «Three Ages» by Titian

«He knows he can’t keep her»

Andrey Rossokhin, psychoanalyst

“The direct perception of the picture is hindered by the image imposed over the centuries — it encourages us to see in Raphael’s Madonna the delight of religious triumph, the transformation of the human into the divine, the earthly into the eternal, harmony that ennobles the soul … I well understand the doubts of Leo Tolstoy, who once remarked: “Sistine Madonna» does not evoke any feeling, but only an agonizing concern about whether I am experiencing the feeling that is required. The key word here is «anxiety».

Many researchers have written about the anxiety emanating from the picture, explaining it by the fact that Raphael wanted to convey the pain of the mother, foreseeing the suffering of her son.

I, too, plunging into the picture, feel anxiety and even fear, but only for a different reason. Behind the Madonna, in the background of the picture, I see barely noticeable faces of people (it is believed that these are angels depicted in the form of clouds). Their eyes are eagerly fixed on the Madonna. Why are they all behind a curtain? Is the artist going to let these people in, or, on the contrary, wants to close the curtain as soon as possible in order to leave them there and protect the Madonna from their views? If you look closely, there are many adult, male faces with open mouths that bear little resemblance to angels. They seem disgusting and dangerous, as if they are chasing the Madonna, trying to break through to her, to “swallow” her. To understand the meaning unconsciously invested by Raphael in this background, one must know the history of the painting. It is believed that Raphael’s mistress, Margherita Luti, the daughter of a baker, served as the prototype of the Madonna. She often cheated on him, which caused him to suffer and be very jealous of her. I suppose that unconsciously, in these faces behind the Madonna, Raphael depicted those men who swarm around her and wanted to seduce her. Apparently, the artist blamed them. And he tried to cleanse his windy beloved from sinful earthly passions, to deify.

And there is a reason for that too. Raphael lost his mother very early, at the age of eight. Three years later, his father died. Perhaps, in three children’s figures (the angels and the baby Christ are similar to each other, as if they reflect the three children’s «I» of Raphael himself), the artist wanted to convey his pain and sadness associated with the loss of his mother and father. One of them, sitting in his mother’s arms, already anticipates her early death. The two angels at the bottom of the picture are leaning on the lid of the coffin. The one on the right is full of melancholic feelings and sadness. The second angel looks full of hope at the Madonna, as if believing in the resurrection of her dead mother. It is interesting that the prototype of these two angels was two boys looking at the window of a bakery inaccessible to them. This is the most important circumstance if we remember that Raphael’s mistress was the baker’s daughter.

Rafael hoped to find his lost mother in his beloved and at the same time was sure that he would lose her, just like his mother. And therefore he could not treat her as a depraved woman. He needed to deify her and make her immortal in order to love her as a mother too. So I feel a double tension in the picture — male passion, burning jealousy and the deepest childhood pain from the loss of a mother, a naive dream of her resurrection. Perhaps, consciously depicting the suffering of the Madonna, foreseeing the loss of her son, he unconsciously put a different meaning into this picture — his own doom and the knowledge that he would not be able to keep his woman either as a lover or as a mother.