L'altro Rinascimento: Raffaello e i pittori del Nord

The essay focuses on the controversial issue of Raphael’s relationship with Northern art. It is insufficiently realized that this phenomenon was a constant feature in Raphael’s career, and that it was a mutual process. Possible direct contact between Raphael and artists from the Netherlands are considered, especially with regard to the documented presence in Rome, in 1509, of Jan Gossaert. Hitherto unexamined evidence of personal contact between the two artists is presented, in the form of a reconstruction of Gossaert’s itinerary and an analysis of his references to antiquity, which display significant correspondences to those found in work by Raphael. The implications of this connection go further than a mere identification of sources. To Vasari, Raphael was a champion of Italian supremacy, besting Northern artists on their own terms in portraiture, landscape and even oil painting, the great pride of Netherlandish art. Looking at the issue without such parti pris, we can say that Raphael and Gossaert were deliberately pursuing a mutual relationship that combined the Renaissances of north and south into a form – a European Renaissance – that in the case of Raphael was essential to his legendary “ottimo universale,” universal excellence in painting. The presence in Antwerp since 1517 of his cartoons for tapestries in the Sixtine Chapel assured a high-level reception in the Netherlands of his art. These artistic endeavors have a political dimension as well, fitting into the vision of Charles V for a Habsburg Empire.