Sistine Madonna

A curtain parts, and a young mother steps toward us on the clouds, holding her child. Below, two little winged angels lean on their elbows and gaze upward, as if they too cannot quite believe what they see.

The story behind the painting

The Sistine Madonna was commissioned in 1512 by Pope Julius II in honour of his late uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, as an altarpiece for the church of the Benedictine monastery of San Sisto in Piacenza, a house long tied to the Rovere family. The commission required both Saint Sixtus and Saint Barbara to appear. Raphael probably painted it around 1513-1514, and it was one of the last Madonnas he made. Giorgio Vasari called it a truly rare and extraordinary work. In 1754 Augustus III of Poland bought the painting and brought it to Dresden, where, the story goes, he moved his own throne to display it better. It remains in Dresden today.

What to look for

Mary stands on clouds, holding the Christ Child, with Saint Sixtus on one side and Saint Barbara on the other. Behind them, look closely: the bright sky is crowded with dozens of faint, half-hidden putti. At the bottom edge, two winged putti rest on a ledge, chins on their hands. Notice the colours, which scientific analysis has traced to Renaissance pigments: natural ultramarine mixed with lead white in Mary's blue robe, malachite with orpiment in the green curtain at the top, and lead-tin-yellow, vermilion and lead white in Saint Barbara's yellow sleeve. Note that the sources give slightly different sizes: Wikipedia states 265 by 196 centimetres, while Wikidata records 269.5 by 201.

Meaning and intent

In Germany the painting came to mean far more than an altarpiece. Writers debated whether Raphael was a devout Christian or a divine pagan, and a legend called Raphael's Dream imagined that he had received the image in a heavenly vision. Some viewers were said to fall into a kind of religious ecstasy before it. The art historian Hans Belting wrote that no other work had so fired the German imagination. Johann Joachim Winckelmann praised it in 1764, and it influenced Goethe, Wagner and Nietzsche. Dostoyevsky called it the greatest revelation of the human spirit. A legend even claims that in 1849 Mikhail Bakunin urged hanging it on Dresden's barricades.

Legacy

The painting survived the bombing of Dresden in World War II, stored in a tunnel in Saxon Switzerland. The Red Army took it to Moscow, where it was briefly shown at the Pushkin Museum in 1946, and in 1955 it was returned to Germany. Dramatic stories about its rescue from flooded caves later circulated, but the Soviet art historian Andrei Chegodaev and a brigade commander both called them lies; the sources record this conflict. Back in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, it is described as the collection's highlight, and its 500th anniversary was celebrated in 2012. Its two small angels have become famous on their own, reproduced on stamps, postcards and much else.

Lo sapevi?

Commissioned in 1512 by Pope Julius II for San Sisto, Piacenza.
Moved to Dresden in 1754; taken to Moscow after World War II and returned in 1955.
Size given as 265 × 196 cm by Wikipedia and 269.5 × 201 cm by Wikidata.

Wikipedia · Wikidata