Overview

Although Raphael has long been recognized as one of the great innovators of visionary painting (images of supernatural phenomena, including apparitions and prophetic visions), the full measure of his achievement in this area has never been taken. Vision and the Visionary in Raphael redresses this oversight by offering an expansive reading of these works within their contemporary artistic and religious contexts. At the center of the book is Raphael's engagement with one of the critical conflicts in the Renaissance understanding of vision. Whereas artistic theory emphasized painting's engagement with the physical world by way of the bodily eyes, religious images were generally intended to inspire their viewers to move from sensible appearances to the use of their spiritual eyes for contemplation of their god. For Raphael and his contemporaries, this double commitment to physical appearances and the spiritual dimensions of the image presented one of the greatest challenges of Renaissance religious art.

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9780271037042

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Reviews

This highly original and informative work shows how Raphael created a new mode of painting in 16th-century Rome when he combined Renaissance naturalism with the tradition of sacred imagery. Kleinbub provides insightful formal readings and thorough assessments of the iconography of Raphael's major frescoes, paintings, and tapestries that depicted the world, spiritual phenomena, and the divine as indisputably real. . . . As the author traces Raphael s development that culminated in The Transfiguration of Christ, he makes a compelling case for viewing Raphael as one of the inventors of a new type of devotional image one that seamlessly integrated images of heaven and representations of the divine with depictions of the physical world. D. H. Cibelli, Choice

Christian Kleinbub's Vision and the Visionary in Raphael constitutes a major contribution to the literature on Raphael and, more broadly, on Italian Renaissance painting. It is hoped that others will follow his lead in elucidating the place of vision and the visionary in art of this period. --Sheryl E. Reiss, Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation

Author Information

Christian K. Kleinbub is Professor of Italian Renaissance Art at The Ohio State University and Co-Director of the New Foundation for Art History.

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