Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T20:21:15.123Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tropes of Revelation in Raphael's Transfiguration*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jodi Cranston
Jodi Cranston*
Affiliation:
Boston University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The development of the contrapposto pose in Renaissance art depends, as is well known, on ancient discussions of the rhetorical figure of antithesis. Such philological associations, however, have drawn attention to the pose as a motif of style, notable only for its gracefulness of form. This essay considers how the turning pose in Raphael's work, rather than merely referring to the rhetorical figure of antithesis, evokes the thematic and structural significance of the trope. The discussion focuses on the turning female in his Transfiguration as a figuration of the antithetical event of revelation, where the unknown becomes known.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , Spring 2003 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The research and writing of this essay were supported by the Humanities Foundation at Boston University. I am grateful to David Rosand for his thoughtful reading of an earlier draft and for his continued support of the project. I would also like to thank the RQ readers, Marcia Hall and an anonymous reader, who offered helpful suggestions.

References

Alberti, Leon Battista. 1991. On Painting. Trans. Cecil Grayson. London and New York.Google Scholar
Allison, Ann H. 1974. “Antique Sources of Leonardo's Leda.” Art Bulletin 56:375-84.Google Scholar
Ames-Lewis, Francis. 1989. “Leonardo's ‘Kneeling Leda': The Evolution of an Expressive Figure Composition.” Drawing 11:73–76.Google Scholar
Augustine, . 1961. Confessions. Trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin. London and New York.Google Scholar
Augustine, . 1991. Sermons on the New Testament III (51-94). Trans. Edmund Hill. Brooklyn, NY.Google Scholar
Bellori, Giovanni Pietro. 1997. “ The School of Athens,” trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl. In Raphael's ‘School of Athens,’ ed. Marcia Hall, 48-56. Cambridge and New York.Google Scholar
Belting, Hans. 1994. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Chicago and London.Google Scholar
Berdini, Paolo. 1997. The Religious Art of Jacopo Bassano: Painting as Visual Exegesis. Cambridge and New York.Google Scholar
Brown, David Alan. 1986. “Leonardo and Raphael's Transfiguration.” In Raffaello a Roma, ed. Christoph Luitpold Frommel and Matthias Winner, 237-43. Rome.Google Scholar
Burckhardt, Jacob. 1908. The Cicerone. Trans. A.H. Clough. New York.Google Scholar
Calvesi, Maurizio. 1984. “Raffaello: La Trasfigurazione.” In Oltre Raffaello, ed. Luciano Cassanelli and Sergio Rossi, 33-41. Rome.Google Scholar
Castiglione, Baldassare. 1959. The Courtier. Trans. Charles S. Singleton. New York and London.Google Scholar
Cropper, Elizabeth. 1994. “The Place of Beauty in the High Renaissance and Its Displacements in the History of Art.” In Place and Displacement in the Renaissance, ed. Alvin Vos, 159-205. Binghamton, NY.Google Scholar
Dussler, Leopold. 1966. Raffael: Kritisches Verzeichnis der Gemalde, Wandbilder, und Bildteppiche. Munich.Google Scholar
Farago, Claire. 1992. Leonardo da Vinci's ‘Paragone': A Critical Interpretation with a New Edition of the Tegt in the ‘Codex Urbinas. Leiden and New York.Google Scholar
Freccero, John. 1997. Dante: The Poetics of Conversion. Ed. Rachel Jacoff. Cambridge, MA, and London.Google Scholar
Freedberg, Sydney J. 1971. Paintingin Italy: 1500-1600. New Haven and London.Google Scholar
Freedberg, Sydney J., Mancinelli, Fabrizio, and Oberhuber, Konrad. 1981. A Masterpiece Closeup: The ‘Transfiguration’ by Raphael. Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Goethe, Johann W. 1962. Italian Journey. Trans. W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer. New York.Google Scholar
Gombrich, Ernst H. 1981. “The Ecclesiastical Significance of Raphael's Transfiguration.” In Ars Auro Prior: Studia Ioanni Bilostocki sexagenario dicata, ed. Juliusz A. Chruscicki, 241-43.Google Scholar
Hall, Marcia. 1992. Color and Meaning: Practice and Theory in Renaissance Painting. Cambridge and New York.Google Scholar
Hall, Marcia. 1997. Raphael's ‘School of Athens'. Cambridge and New York.Google Scholar
Hall, Marcia. The Holy Bible (Revised Standard Version). 1946. New York and Toronto.Google Scholar
Hoogewerff, G.J. 1952. “Leonardo e Raffaello.” Commentari 3:173-83.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Michael. 1977. Rubens and Italy. Ithaca and New York.Google Scholar
Joannides, Paul. 1983. The Drawings of Raphael. Berkeley and Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Jones, Roger and Penny, Nicholas. 1983. Raphael. New Haven and London.Google Scholar
King, Catherine. 1982. “The Liturgical and Commemorative Allusions in Raphael's Transfiguration and Failure to Heal.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 45:148-59.Google Scholar
da Vinci, Leonardo. 1956. Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Ed. and trans. A.P. McMahon. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ.Google Scholar
da Vinci, Leonardo. 1989. Leonardo on Painting. Ed. and trans. Martin Kemp and Margaret Walker. New Haven and London.Google Scholar
Liitgens, H. 1929. “Raffaels Transfiguration in der Kunstliteratur der letzten Vier Jahrhunderte.” Ph.D diss., University of Gottingen.Google Scholar
Mancinelli, Fabrizio. 1979. Primopiano di un capolavoro: La Trasfigurazione di Raffaello. Vatican City.Google Scholar
Oberhuber, Konrad. 1962. “Vorzeichnungen zu Raffaels ‘Transfiguration.'” Jabrbucb der Berliner Museen 4:116-49.Google Scholar
Oberhuber, Konrad. 1982. Raphaels ‘Transfiguration: Stil und Bedeutung. Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Oberhuber, Konrad. 1999. Raphael: The Paintings. New York and London.Google Scholar
Pardo, Mary. 1989. “The Subject of Savoldo's Magdalene.“’ Art Bulletin 71:67–91.Google Scholar
Pedretti, Carlo. 1979. “Ancora sul rapporto Giorgione-Leonardo e l'origine del ritratto del spalla.” In Giorgione: Atti del convegno internazionale di studio per il 5° centenario della nascita, 181-85. Castelfranco.Google Scholar
Pope-Hennessy, John. 1971. Raphael. London.Google Scholar
Popham, A.E. and Johannes Wilde. 1949. The Italian Drawings of the XV and XVI Centuries in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle. London.Google Scholar
Posittr, Kathleen Weil Garris. 1974. Leonardo and Central Italian Art: 1515-1550. New York.Google Scholar
Preimesberger, Rudolf. 1987. “Tragische Motive in Raffaels Transfiguration.” Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 50:88–115.Google Scholar
Quintilian, . 1985-93. Institutio Oratoria. Trans. H.E. Butler. 5 vols. Cambridge, MA, and New York.Google Scholar
Redig de Campos, D. 1975-76. “Restauro della Trasfigurazione di Raffaello. Nota sulla autografia.” Colloqui del Sodalizio 5:173-75.Google Scholar
Redig de Campos, D. 1977. “La Trasfigurazione di Raffaello. Cenni sulla sua storia, il recente restauro e l'autografia del dipinto.” Strenna dei Romanisti 38:99–101.Google Scholar
Richter, Irma A., ed. 1949. Paragone: A Comparison of the Arts by Leonardo da Vinci. London and New York.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. 1977. “Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation.” Harvard Theological Review 70:1–37.Google Scholar
Rosand, David. 1985. “Raphael and the Pictorial Generation of Meaning.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 5:38–43.Google Scholar
Rosand, David. 1990. “'Divinita di cosa dipinta': Pictorial Structure and the Legibility of the Altarpiece.” In The Altarpiece in the Renaissance, ed. Peter Humfrey and Martin Kemp, 143-64. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Rosand, David. 1997. Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice. Cambridge and New York.Google Scholar
Rosand, David. 2000. “Raphael's School of Athens and the Artist of the Modern Manner.” In The World of Savonarola: Italian Elites and Perceptions of Crisis, ed. Stella Fletcher and Christine Shaw, 212-31. Burlington, VT.Google Scholar
Roskill, Mark W. 1968. Dolce's Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento. New York.Google Scholar
Rubin, Patricia. 1995. Giorgio Vasari: Art and History. New Haven and London.Google Scholar
Schiller, Gertrud. 1971-72. Iconography of Christian Art. Trans. Janet Seligman. 2 vols. Greenwich, CT.Google Scholar
Schwartz, M. 1997. “Raphael's Authorship in the Expulsion of Heliodorus.” Art Bulletin 79:467-92.Google Scholar
Sheard, Wendy Steadman. 1979. Antiquity in the Renaissance. Northampton, MA.Google Scholar
Shearman, John. 1972. The Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen: Raphael's Cartoons and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel. London and New York.Google Scholar
Shearman, John. 1986. “The Expulsion of Heliodorus.” In Rajfaello a Roma, 75–88. Rome.Google Scholar
Shearman, John. 1992. Only Connect… Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton, NJ.Google Scholar
Smyth, Craig Hugh. 1992. Mannerism and Maniera. Vienna.Google Scholar
Summers, David. 1972. “Maniera and Movement: the Figura Serpentinata.” Art Quarterly 35:269–301.Google Scholar
Shearman, John. 1977. “Contrapposto: Style and Meaning in Renaissance Art.” Art Bulletin 59:336-61.Google Scholar
Shearman, John. 1981. Michelangelo and the Language of Art. Princeton, NJ.Google Scholar
Teuffel, C. Gardner. 1984. “Sebastiano del Piombo, Raphael, and Narbonne.” Burlington Magazine 126:765-66.Google Scholar
Vasari, Giorgio. 1996. Lives of the L'ainters, Sculptors and Architects. Trans. Gaston du C. de Vere, ed. David Ekserdjian. 2 vols. New York and Toronto.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Bernard, ed. 1970-72. Trattati di poetica e retorica del Cinquecento. 4 vols. Bari.Google Scholar