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I’ve posted earlier on my five favorites from the Gardner Museum (see here), but those were chosen from artworks I found on the Net. In August 2020, I visited the Gardner for the first time in decades. The introduction to this series is here. For all posts on the Gardner, click “Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum” in the tag cloud. The Gardner’s site is here. On the Raphael Room, see here.

Raphael Room

For this post, I’ve arranged the artwork from the Raphael Room in chronological order and added captions. (This would appall Isabella, whose eccentric way of arranging a museum didn’t include the use of labels.)

The head below imitates Greek art of the Archaic Period (ca. 600-500 BC), but as the Gardner’s site notes, it’s actually a Greco-Roman creation of the 1st-2nd century AD. Every so often, old-fashioned comes back into fashion.

Mid-15th-century Virgin and Child – an example of the “Sweet Style,” which became popular in Florence after Donatello created his Pazzi Madonna. (On the Pazzi Madonna and its effect on Florentine sculptors, see Innovators in Sculpture, Chapter 8.)

An Annunciation ca. 1487 by another Florentine painter. The floor is a bravura illustration of mathematically calculated linear perspective, but via the placement of its vanishing point, the artist also focuses your eye on the interaction between the angel and the Virgin. See Chapter 18 in Innovators in Painting.

Crivelli’s Saint George Slaying the Dragon, 1470. Crivelli’s figures are sometimes odd, but I love the sharpness of the detail. Look, for instance, at the horse’s head: better photo and more details here.

This one isn’t catalogued as a Crivelli, but it’s in much the same hard-edged, precisely detailed style.

One of many cassoni in the Gardner. A cassone was a marriage chest, usually painted, gilded, inlaid, and/or carved. It was filled with items given by the bride’s family, more or less valuable depending on the family’s wealth. After the wedding, the cassone was usually placed at the foot of the couple’s bed.

Piero del Pollaiuolo and his brother Antonio reportedly carried out dissections to improve their knowledge of anatomy. The three-quarter view used by artists in Northern Europe gave more scope for showing facial anatomy correctly than this portrait, of the profile type that had long been the standard in Italy. See also the Gardner’s page on this work.

Another tour-de-force of perspective: this one by Botticelli. Botticelli fell under the spell of the fanatical Dominican friar Giorolamo Savonarola in the 1490s. Vasari, his biographer, doesn’t confirm that Botticelli threw his paintings into Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities, but it’s possible. In any case, Botticelli’s later works, including this one, are dated after Savonarola’s death in 1498.

Raphael’s portrait of Tommaso Inghirami exists in two versions: this one and one at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. As far as I can tell, no one knows if they’re both original Raphaels, or if one’s a copy. Raphael’s best known today for the School of Athens, but he could produce a helluva portrait.

Architecture and decoration on the second floor of the Gardner

Look at the three-dimensional decoration at the corner and at the top of the wainscoting: I’ve never seen anything quite like it. What is it made of? In molded plastic it would be easy, but when the Gardners’ “palace” was being constructed ca. 1903, there was no plastic. One could do it with plaster, but that’s very, very complex and extremely well preserved for plaster.

More

• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon print and Kindle formats.
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