The painting "Lady with the Unicorn", by Rafael Santi, shows one of the most attractive and mysterious masterpieces of genius. It was first mentioned in 1652 in the collection of Galleria Borghese in Rome.
Florentine period of young Raphael
After training with Perugino and having developed his own style, young Rafael goes to Florence, where he supposedly appears in the workshop of the great Leonardo in 1504 and sees a portrait of Mona Lisa. This work makes a great impression on the young painter. He carefully studies the techniques of an experienced master, makes sketches from Leonardo’s paintings and begins to work on his technique with even greater persistence. In Florence in 1506–1507 the painting "Lady with the Unicorn" was created. Rafael Santi could not have imagined that in a few centuries she would cause debate and debate about how many changes would happen to her before she revealed to everyone in her original form. Researchers suggest that the portrait was created from nature. Two years later, having already completed the painting “The Lady with the Unicorn,” Raphael will forever move to Rome.
Refined style of a young painter
Only 36 years were allotted to the “divine Sanzio,” as his contemporaries called him, to turn from a gifted child into a true child of the Renaissance, who had the gift of an artist, a master of monumental murals, and an architect. His style captivates with clarity, poise and purity.
The painting "Lady with the Unicorn" by Raphael: Description
On the canvas we see a portrait of an unknown beauty. The composition is clearly created under the influence of Leonardo.
A young lady with a unicorn sits on a loggia, which is framed on both sides, like the work of his great predecessor, two columns. Her hands, like the hands of the Mona Lisa, are folded in a half-ring. She also slightly looks away. But she doesn’t tell us anything, as Mona Lisa does. If Leonardo portrayed a young mother of the family, then Raphael in the picture “A Lady with a Unicorn” created a captivating, clean and innocent image of a young girl with a small unicorn on her lap.According to the legends of that time, he can only be tamed by a girl who has retained her chastity.
We continue the description of Raphael Santi's painting “A Lady with a Unicorn”. The neatly tiled head with golden hair is adorned with a small diadem that possibly ties the hair from behind. The virgin is depicted against a clear, clear sky, where in the distance you can see the low, bluish hills of Tuscany, in which there is no mystery. A low-cut dress with lush detachable sleeves, a golden chain jewelry with a ruby ​​and a pearl, which has the shape of a drop, show that this is a wealthy elegant noble lady. There is only one oddity that everyone notices: there is not a single ring on the fingers of the unknown.
This female image is completely harmonious and whole. It is written on the transitions of pure and bright colors.
Grace and sophistication, as well as the mystery of the soul of this young stranger, are the two main secrets that the portrait hides. This is one of the beauty ideals of a woman at the beginning of the 16th century.
Who was considered the author?
The story of the portrait is unique. Her authorship was attributed to Perugino, Ghirlandaio and many other painters, and Vasari did not give a description of this work. D. Cantalamesso first began research in 1916. He was the first to doubt the authorship of the painting “A Lady with a Unicorn”. Very attentive to its attribution came in the thirties and forties of the last century. She was examined by x-rays. Since 1935, restoration began. In the picture before that, everyone had seen St. Catherine of Alexandria, on whose shoulders a cloak was thrown. She even held her hands differently.
The drawing from the Louvre, where we see the initial stage of creating the portrait, really helped.
Metamorphoses of St. Catherine
X-rays revealed several layers of later appendices, as well as the fact that initially on the model’s hands was a small dog (a symbol of fidelity of spouses), which the author himself replaced with a unicorn. This was found out in 1959, when they once again examined the work and found out that in the course of later revisions the painter himself changed the meaning of the painting from devotion to purity. The picture was badly damaged. Restorers, carefully removing layer by layer, returned the masterpiece to its original form.
Now it is assumed that the picture went through several stages of work:
- The model holding the dog was less young, and Raphael painted only the lake landscape, the sky and the figure against its background.
- The position of the hands, sleeves, the dog, the columns was being added by another artist. Perhaps he was close to the Leonardo school.
- After several decades, the dog became a unicorn, which required rewriting hands.
- A century later, an unknown artist turned this image into St. Catherine.
It has still not been possible to find out who served as the model. This is the mystery of the portrait.
Exhibition of one painting
The Pearl of the Renaissance "Lady with the Unicorn" (Raphael's painting) was put on display at the Pushkin Museum in 2011. The painting was brought to Russia to mark the year of the culture of Italy and its language in our country. The work rarely leaves home.
R. Vodre, head of museums in Rome, said that the preparation of the painting for a trip to the Russian Federation took three months. Originally created a completely sealed container. It is in it that the microclimate necessary for the canvas should be preserved. After that, an external wooden box was made, in which a container was placed that can not move a single millimeter. The container was brought to Rome airport in a special car and then placed on a government plane for delivery to Moscow.
The Pushkin Museum ensured the safety of the masterpiece by placing it under bulletproof glass.
The experience of mono-exhibitions at the Pushkin Museum is already available, since the Mona Lisa was brought to it in the 70s. The viewer was given forty-five minutes to watch the masterpiece. Queues, of course, are inevitable, but art lovers waited for a meeting with the painting of Rafael Santi.