VATICAN CORNER
In 1508 Pope Julius II invited the Italian painter Raphael, a student of Leonardo da Vinci, to Rome and commissioned him to paint religious frescos in the Vatican Palace. He found several artists already at work on different rooms, many painting over recently completed paintings that Pope Julius’s predecessor, Alexander VI had commissioned. Pope Julius was determined to remove all signs of the previous pope from the palace. During that same time Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Finishing the first room, Raphael was given 2 others, and eventually 1 more. Raphael had been secretly let into the Sistine Chapel to observe Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling and was clearly influenced. Later after Raphael’s death at the age of 37, Michelangelo accused Raphael of plagiarism, and complained in a letter that “everything he knew about art he got from me,” although other of Michelangelo’s quotations showed he had more generous reactions to Raphael’s work. The very large and complex compositions these two men created along with those of Leonardo da Vinci are regarded as among the supreme works of the High Renaissance period. One of the paintings Raphael created was of a Biblical scene entitled “The Adoration of the Magi”. It depicts the “Three Kings” or “Wise Men” who followed the star across the desert to Bethlehem, meeting Baby Jesus. The painting has vibrant colors, balanced composition and subtle perspective. Unlike earlier art, Renaissance art uses linear perspective, weight and color to depict a more natural reality. This column is being written before the 2017 Feast of the Epiphany, the celebration of the Magi, the three kings: Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar meeting baby Jesus and their offered symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. A year ago, in January 2016, Pope Francis presided over the Mass of the Epiphany in St. Peter’s Basilica before thousands of pilgrims from around the world. He said “ we do well to repeat the question asked by the Magi: “Where is the child who has been born the King of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage”. We are impelled, especially in an age like our own, to seek the signs which God offers us, realizing that great effort is needed to interpret them and thus to understand his will. We are challenged to go to Bethlehem, to find the Child and his Mother. Let us follow the light which God offers us – that tiny light. The light which streams from the face of Christ, full of mercy and fidelity, and once we have found him, let us worship him with all our heart, and present him with our gifts: our freedom, our understanding and our love. True wisdom lies concealed in the face of this Child. It is here, in the simplicity of Bethlehem, that the life of the Church is summed up. For here is the wellspring of that light which draws to itself every individual in the world and guides the journey of the peoples along the path of peace.”
Sources: disrecognizedspac.wordpress.com, wikipedia.org, news.va