Raphael as Seen by Russian Writers from Zhukovsky to Turgenev

Raphael as Seen by Russian Writers from Zhukovsky to TurgenevAuthor(s): Irene PearsonSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Jul., 1981), pp. 346-369Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4208317 .

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SEER, Vol. 59, No. 3, July I98I

Raphael as Seen by

Russian Writers from

Zhukovsky to Turgenev

IRENE PEARSON

'THE nineteenth century is to Russia what the age of the Renaissance was for Italy', writes Vladimir Weidld.' He goes on, however, to point out that although Russia's national culture was stimulated at this time by contact with Western Europe, Europe itself was becoming more and more alienated from its cultural past. The ways in which Raphael's works were perceived by Russians and evoked in Russian literature reveal a complex cross-hatching of viewpoints: of traditionalist and iconoclast, Westernizer and Slavophile, romantic and materialist. The opinions of creative writers are essential to the subject because, they were the first Russian art critics.2 Furthermore, by studying a writer's response to a particular painter, one gains a deeper appreciation of his use of paintings as an element in characterization, thematic development and the creation of images.3 The present article, intended as a background to the better-known history of Dostoyevsky's and Tolstoy's reactions to Raphael, examines some aspects of his reception by Russian writers from Zhukovsky to Turgenev.

Raphael Sanzio (or Raffaello Santi, I483-I520) was acclaimed in his own lifetime for conceiving images of perfect harmony and grace, for combining in plastic terms the classical Greek and the Christian views of man; in his works, bodily beauty expressed a lofty and gentle spirituality. Raphael-worship was pushed to extremes in the seventeenth century, when imitation of his paintings was mandatory at the French Academy under Lebrun. Nevertheless, Raphael was still a by-word for artistic perfection throughout much of the nineteenth century, his cult fed by the adulation of Ingres. After a marked decline in favour at the beginning of the twentieth century, appreciation of Raphael has once again been growing, in a more sober spirit, over the past twenty-five years.4

I. Pearson is Lecturer in Russian at the Victoria University of Wellington. 1 Zadacha Rossii, New York, 1956, p. 65. 2John Bowlt, 'The Art Criticism of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy', Art JNews,

vol. 76, New York, May I977, p. 87. 3Compare Jeffrey Meyers, Painting and the Novel, Manchester, 1975, p. 4. 4John Pope-Hennessy, Raphael, London, n.d., p. 7 and ch. 6.



RAPHAEL BY RUSSIAN WRITERS 347

There were more paintings by Raphael in Russia in the nineteenth century than there are now. In I77I Catherine II with Diderot's help bought St George and the Dragon (I505) and The Holy Family ('Virgin and Child with the beardless St Joseph', c. 1506-7). (The authenticity of the latter, which is in a very poor state of preservation, has been seriously questioned.) In I 778-85 she had Raphael's Vatican Logge (I 5I8-I9) copied, and the canvases were stretched on walls specially built in the Hermitage. Leningrad thus possesses the only life-sized copy of the Logge, which have been called 'Raphael's Bible' because the fifty-two pictures in thirteen bays depict the most important Biblical scenes. Amazingly, it appears that Nicholas I was not aware of their existence; reminded of the fact when visiting the originals in Rome in I 845, he allegedly remarked, 'It would have been better had they stayed here.'5 In I836 Nicholas had acquired the Alba Madonna ('Seated Madonna with Child and the young St John', I 5 II); it and the St George, both sold to Andrew Mellon of Pittsburgh in the I93os, are today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.6 Finally, the diminutive Madonna Conestabile ('Madonna with the Child reading on her lap', c. I502-3), an early work very similar to those of Raphael's Umbrian master Perugino, was purchased by the curator of the Hermitage in I870.7 One must also keep in mind the large number of paintings ascribed to Raphael, a phenomenon nourished by his vast popularity: two such pictures were Giorgione's Judith, bought by Catherine II, and Giulio Romano's La Fornarina ('The Baker's Daughter'; sometimes titled 'Lady at her Toilet'), obtained from a Munich dealer by the Hermitage in i839.8 The huge collections of A. S. Vlasov were said to have included one or more Raphaels, but since they were sold after his death in I825, it is difficult to know if they were genuine.9 The gullibility of culture-hungry Russians must have helped trade in Raphael forgeries to thrive as well. In a vaudeville sketch of I844 by Nekrasov, the 'sharp' dealer Loskutov is conned into believing that a daub which portrays 'three dogs, two pigs and a ram and a man in a Circassian hat"0 is genuinely the work of Raphael 'Saktsio'.

5 According to the reminiscences of Count F. P. Tolstoy, who was in his entourage: in T. P. Passek, Iz dal'nikh let: Vospominaniya, Moscow, I963, vol. 2, pp. 407-8.

6 For the intriguing story of that sale see John Walker, National Gallery of Art, Washing- ton, D.C., New York, n.d., pp. 24-26. He gives the date of their transference as 1930-31, while Luitpold Dussler gives it as 1937 in his Raphael: A Critical Catalogue of His Pictures, Wall-paintings and Tapestries, London and New York, 1971, pp. 13, 35.

7 Although Hermitage catalogues date the Conestabile Madonna as 1500-2, a recent study by T. Fomicheva ('K voprosu o datirovke "Madonny Konestabile" Rafaelya', Soobshcheniya gosudarstvennogo ordena Lenina Ermitazha, xxxv, Leningrad, 1972, pp. 3-5) concludes that it was painted in late 1502-early I503.

8 Pierre Descargues, The Hermitage, London, I96I, p. 6o. 9 Neizdannyye pis'ma inostrannykh pisateley XVIII-XIX vekov, ed. Ml. P. Alekseyev,

Moscow and Leningrad, I960, pp. 82-83. 10 N. A. Nekrasov, Sobraniye sochineniy v 8-i tomakh, Moscow, I965-67, vol. 4, p. 259.



348 IRENE PEARSON

I

The famous Sistine Madonna ('Madonna standing on clouds with SS Sixtus and Barbara', c. 15I3), located in the Dresden Gallery, was for Russians among the most accessible of Raphael's original works. Since it was also generally regarded as his chef d'auvre, it became a focus for their varied interpretations of Raphael. Zhukovsky initiated this practice with his article 'Rafaeleva Madonna' ('Raphael's Madonna'), which had its genesis in a letter from Dresden dated 29 June I82I; not published until I824, it was soon after reprinted, and gave great impetus to the veneration of the Sistine Madonna in Russia."1 Belinsky wrote that he practically knew the piece by heart in his youth: 'Who does not remember Zhukovsky's article about this amazing work, who has not from his early years formed for himself a notion of it according to that article ?'12 At the end of his life, on the other hand, he was to disagree sharply with Zhukovsky's judgement of the painting - as will be seen.

Zhukovsky approached the Sistine Madonna in a different way from earlier Russian travellers. For example, in his well-known letters from Europe published in 1789-go, Karamzin had recorded merely that he 'looked attentively' at Raphael's masterpiece, and his largely derivative footnote on the artist gives no further clue as to its impact on him.'3 'Zhukovsky transfers the principal accent to the inner, spiritual content of the image', writes a modern commen- tator.14 Zhukovsky's article opens with a report of how difficult it was to contemplate the work, surrounded as it was by philistine spectators, neighbouring pictures and itself in a poorly maintained state. He none the less managed to integrate with an account of the deep emotions the picture aroused in him, a description of its composition: the striking impression one has that the Madonna is approaching through the parted curtains, even though no movement is actually shown; the curve of her arm which serves as a throne for the Child; and the expressive positions of the two accompanying saints, of the two cherubic 'angels' and even of Sixtus's tiara 'abandoned on the boundary of this world'.'5

Polyarnaya zvezda of 1824, reprinted Moscow and Leningrad, I960, pp. 422-26; and Sobraniye novykh russkikh sochineniy i perevodov v proze, vyshedshikh v svet s I823 po I824 god, pt. 2, St Petersburg, 1826. Also V. A. Zhukhovsky, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy v tryokh tomakh, St Petersburg, I906, vol. 3, pp. 433-36.

12 V. G. Belinsky, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy v 13-i tomakh, Moscow, 1953-59 (hereafter PSS), vOl. I0, p. 308.

18 N. M. Karamzin, Izbrannyye sochineniya, Moscow and Leningrad, I964, vol. I, p. 145.

On his footnote, see A. G. Cross, N. M. Karamzin, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1971, p. 84.

14 I. Danilova, 'Russkiye pisateli i khudozhniki XIX veka o Drezdenskoy gallereye', in M. Alpatov and I. Danilova, Staryye mastera v Drezdenskoy gallereye, Moscow, 1959, p. 15.

15 Polyarnaya zvezda, I824, reprinted i960, p. 426.



RAPHAEL BY RUSSIAN WRITERS 349 Significantly, Zhukovsky emphasized the spectator's feeling of

participating in a miracle, an apparition from heaven; 'This is not a picture, but a vision: the longer you look, the more deeply you become convinced that something supernatural is taking place before you ... I began to feel distinctly that my soul was spreading out'.'6 This phenomenon of 'spiritual expansion' Bernard Berenson considers to be the result of Raphael's 'space-composition'."7 According to Zhukovsky, a copy cannot reproduce the same effect, and Fried- rich Muller's recognition that his popular etching done in I809-I6 failed to convey the Sistine Madonna's true greatness led to insanity and suicide.'8

It is interesting that Zhukovsky cited in support of his experience of 'epiphany' the legend that Raphael could find inspiration for this 'living image' of the Madonna only in a vivid dream, since that legend had been created as recently as I796 by Wilhelm Wacken- roder.19 Declaring that 'this picture was born in the moment of a miracle', the Russian poet interpreted one of the cherubs who look thoughtfully upwards from its base, as Raphael himself, contemplat- ing his vision of 'the genius of pure beauty'. Every creative artist finds himself in a similar position, Zhukovsky implied in a poem of I 824 ('Ya muzu yunuyu byvalo') which also alludes to 'geniy chistoy krasoty'. Zhukovsky's attitude to Raphael therefore fits into his basic concept of art's role, its appeal to man's inner life and its revelation of an ideal transcendental world. In the Sistine Madonna's gaze, 'not directed anywhere in particular but seeming to see what is boundless',20 'you find, in some mysterious combination, everything: tranquillity, purity, grandeur and even feeling, but feeling which has already crossed the boundary of things earthly'.2'

In I824 Kyukhel'beker also wrote an epistolary article on the Sistine Madonna; the coincidence does not seem so strange when one considers that 'the aesthetic norms of the so-called Pushkin period were especially close to the ideals of the High Renaissance'.22 Kyukhel'beker's letters call the Dresden Madonna the 'holy of holies', embodying the perfect unity of inspiration and poetic charm. Exclamatory superlatives notwithstanding, Kyukhel'beker's comments display little real enthusiasm for the picture itself; unlike Zhukovsky, he appears rather disappointed in its composition and

16 Ibid., p. 423. 17 B. Berenson, Italian Painters of the Renaissance, London, I 952, pp. 131-32. 18 Compare Marielene Putscher, Rafaels Sixtinische Madonna, Tiibingen, 1955, p. 276. 19 Julie Ann Cristensen, 'The Shaping of the Russian Philosophical Heroine: Feminine

Images of Beauty in Russian Philosophical Aesthetics and the Heroines of Nikolaj Gogol' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 1978, p. 83).

20 Polyarnaya zvezda, p. 425. 21 Ibid., p. 424. 22 Danilova, op. cit., p. i2; see also p. 22.



350 IRENE PEARSON

colouring. Mostly he concentrated on the sentimental aspect of Wackenroder's legend about Raphael, causing Odoyevsky, his fellow editor of Mnemozina, to castigate his 'unscientific' use of the legend. In I826 Wackenroder's book was translated into Russian by three of the Idealist 'Lovers of Wisdom', who believed that beauty had a metaphysical reality. However, the 'Lovers of Wisdom' as well as Kyukhel'beker often assumed that the image of a woman was the primary vehicle of artistic beauty. J. Cristensen remarks: 'This mistake, which tended to cement the notion of true poetry and living art to the actual presence of the beautiful female figure within a work of art, was to have important repercussions on both Idealist aesthetics and Romantic art'.23

II Pushkin never saw the Sistine Madonna, but he surely must have seen copies and engravings of it (an oil copy by A. Ye. Yegorov hung in the Academy of Arts and another in the Empress's reception room). For Pushkin, as for most of his contemporaries, Raphael was doubtless a symbol of 'the genius of pure beauty', a phrase Pushkin used in his poem of I825 to Anna Kern. Pushkin's supposed affinity to Raphael and to Mozart has frequently been noted, including the noble simplicity and lively precision of their works, not to mention the fact that all three died in their thirties. Odoyevsky, in an unpublished article, compared Pushkin's poetry with Raphael's Madonna in the Hermitage: the canvas and paints were not worth much in themselves, he said, but the picture aroused many lofty, inexplicable feelings in the soul, which could not be analysed by knowing exactly which colours made it up or how much had been paid for the picture.24

However, Raphael's name is rarely encountered in Pushkin himself. His poem reyo glaza ('Her Eyes', I828) celebrates a Russian beauty, A. A. Olenina. Her father, A. N. Olenin, was President of the Academy of Arts, and their home was a meeting-place for well- known artists and writers. In this poem 'Raphael's angel' may possibly refer to Zhukovsky's interpretation of one of the cherubs in the Sistine Madonna as Raphael himself.

IOTymIIIT liX C yAbI6KO1 AeAI

B H1X CKpOMHbIX rpagu4 TopCKecTBo;

23 Cristensen, op. cit., p. 87; see also pp. 86, 98, 103. 24 Pushkin: Issledovaniya i materialy, Moscow and Leningrad, 1956, vol. I, pp. 333-34.

Interestingly, it has been suggested that Pushkin in his poem Vozrozhdeniye (written in I8I9, first published in I828) refers to that same painting, associating the process of cleaning and restoring it to that of rediscovering pure poetic visions: see M.Yu. Varshavskaya, Stikhotvoreniya Pushkina i kartina Rafaelya, Leningrad, 1949.



RAPHAEL BY RUSSIAN WRITERS 35I

HIO4HHmeT- alreA PaJaqAA TaK co3epXiaeT 6omecTo.25

Some verses written in the same year ('Kto znayet kray, gde nebo bleshchet') pronounce another Russian beauty 'Lyudmila' to be more fascinating than the 'gentle image', in a picture, of La Fornarina or the young Madonna, an allusion to the belief (based on Vasari) that some of Raphael's madonnas were modelled on his mistress, a common baker-woman:

MeqTmI B03BbIIeHHOHi nOAHa,

B MOAxIaHbe CMOTpHT AM4 OHa

Ha oGpa3 HeMTHMII DOpHapHHbI HAI Ma4oHHbI MOAO4OH,

OHa 3aAYMymHBOH_ KpacOfl OnIapOBaTeAbHefi KapTHHbI. . .26

Pushkin challenges Raphael, whom he calls 'inspired' and 'crowned by a Grace', to represent the eternal feminine ideal in the form of this living Russian woman with all her peculiarly Northern charms:

FIOCTHrHHi ripeAeCTm He3eMHyIO,

H1OCTUrHH pa,oc4T B He6ecax,

HmnH Mapuxo HaM ,pyrylo, C ApyrHM MAa4eHJgeM Ha pyKax.27

In Madonna (I830) Pushkin again suggests a concrete embodiment of that ideal, this time his fiancee Natalya Goncharova, and associates her moreover with a painting of the Madonna and Child under a palm tree, unaccompanied by angels. The Creator, he says, has sent down to him 'the purest model of purest charm' (chisteyshey prelesti chisteyshiy obrazets) .28 Tolstoy later alluded to this phrase in the same breath as the Sistine Madonna.29 Pushkin wrote a letter to Natalya a few weeks after the poem, giving a tantalizingly vague hint about the painting he may have had in mind: a blonde madonna who resembled her 'comme deux gouttes d'eau'30 and which he would have purchased, had it not cost 40,000 roubles. A. 0. Smirnova-Rosset recalled that Pushkin viewed a madonna by Perugino in the collection of N. M. Smirnov after breakfasting with

25 'With a smile Leyla looks down, / The triumph of modest graces in her eyes; / She looks up - Raphael's angel / thus contemplates divinity': A. S. Pushkin, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy v io-i tomakh, Moscow, 1958 (hereafter PSS), vol. 3, p. 66.

26 'Full of exalted dreams, / silently she looks / at the gentle image of La Fornarina / or of the young Madonna, / In her pensive beauty / she is more charming than the painting

. .': ibid., p. 56. 27 'Perceive the unearthly charm, / perceive the joy in heaven, / Paint another Mary for

us, / with another child in her arms': ibid., p. 57. 28 Ibid., p. 175.

29 L. N. Tolstoy, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy v go tomakh, Moscow, I935-58, vol. 6o, p. 260.

30 Pushkin, PSS, vol. Io, p. 299.



352 IRENE PEARSON

him. This explanation of the 'madone blonde' is generally accepted, despite the doubtful accuracy of Smirnova's reminiscences and the fact that Pushkin speaks of spending 'whole hours' in front of the painting as well as of the possibility of buying it.31 Whoever the artist, though, the painting must have been permeated with the spirit of Perugino's and Raphael's portrayals of 'the purest model of purest charm'.

Pushkin appreciated Raphael's harmonious combination of physical and spiritual beauty, but he also recognized the danger of idolizing past forms in art. Salieri in Motsart i Saltjeri (i830) is a painstaking craftsman; while Mozart finds hilarious a blind violinist's version of his music, Salieri cannot stand such a desecration:

MHC He cMeIMHO, xor,,a maJAfp HerOAHbIii

MHe naqiKaeT Ma,OHHy Pa4a9A3I ... 32

Is true art murdered, just as Salieri poisoned Mozart, when it is too constrained by tradition, rejecting the carefree flight of genius? It was on this question, among others, that Pushkin ended his 'little tragedy'.

III

Russian Romantic writers of the I83os often highlighted a heroine's pure, 'divine' beauty, her moral and physical perfection. Of course such blonde, blue-eyed paragons became boring, as Pushkin remarked in Chapter 2 of revgeny Onegin. Nevertheless the ideally beautiful woman continued to be popular in fiction; her meek face, angelic simplicity and lovely figure enveloped in a cloud-like dress invariably cause the hero to kneel in adoration as before an ethereal vision. The writer searches for superlatives to convey such beauty, frequently mentioning actual painters, above all the Italian masters.33

Sometimes the technique of contrast was used, on various levels. In Pogorel'sky's Dvoynik (The Double, i828), the narrator exclaims over Adelina, whom he sees in Leipzig, 'Not even in my imagination had I ever seen such a beautiful woman ... No! Not the genius of Raphael, nor the ardent brush of Correggio, nor the inspired chisel of the unknown sculptor of the Medici Venus, ever produced such a face,

31 Pis'ma Pushkina k N. N. Goncharovoy, ed. M. L. Gofman and S. Lifar', 2nd edn, Paris, 1936, p. 42. In Stranitsy istorii russkoy literatury (Moscow, 197I, p. 93) it is stated directly that Pushkin saw a 'Madonna and Child' by Raphael for sale in a store on Nevsky Prospekt in I830, but this is not documented.

32 'I do not find it funny when an unworthy dauber / spoils Raphael's Madonna for me': Pushkin, PSS, vol. 5, p. 360.

33 For a number of quotations from minor Romantic writers who mention Raphael in this way, see M. G. Davidovich, 'Zhenskiy portret u russkikh romantikov pervoy poloviny XIX veka', in Russkiy romantizm: sbornik statey, ed. A. I. Beletsky, Leningrad, 1927, pp. 88-i I4.




such a figure, such a collection of indescribable charms.'34 The twist here is that Adelina is indeed too good to be true: she is a mechanical doll, as her impassioned lover Alceste discovers to his Gothic horror on their wedding night, when wads of cotton pop out of her breast. Her ventriloquist-magician 'father' then proceeds to smash her to pieces with a hammer. Alceste picks up her enamel eyes and flees to destroy himself. This kind of coup de theatre is more likely to raise a laugh than a spine-tingle nowadays, but it does demonstrate clearly the Romantic idea that outward beauty can be an easily-destroyed mask concealing spiritual emptiness.

The theme of poetic, moral or physical beauty is several times associated in Lermontov's works with the name of Raphael, but in each case the ephemeral nature of beauty is stressed. Lermontov based the lyric Poet, written in I828, on the 'vision of Raphael' legend. Whereas Wackenroder and his Russian interpreters had concentrated on Raphael's supposed lack of inspiration before his dream and enduring mental image of the Madonna after it, Lermontov insists that the 'heavenly fire' faded for Raphael after the creative moment, as it does for all poets:

Kor4a Papa9AI BAOXHoBeHHBIR

H1pe'IqICToiV 4eBM AHK CBHJeHHbIH

VKHBOIO KHCTbIO OKOHqaA:

CBOHM CIKYCCTBOM BOCXHWeHHbIi OH ipe4 KapTHHOIO yniaA! Ho cKopo ceH IlOpbIB RIyAeCHbIft

CAa6eA B rpynu ero MAaAof, 1I yTOMAeHHbIHi H HeMORi

OH 3a6bIBaA OrOHL He6eCHbIi.35

A poem written by Lermontov in I832 cynically foresees society's corruption of a young girl's lovely innocence:

KaK AyNI 3apHi, KaK pO3bI AeAei, l7pexKpaceH gBeT ee AaHHT;

KaK y Ma,OHHBI Pa(paAsA

Ee MOAqaHbe roBopHT.

Ho CBeT iero He yHH4ITOMKHT?36

34A. Pogorel'sky, Dvoynik: i1i moi vechera v Malorossii, Moscow, I960, p. 63. 35 'When the inspired Raphael / the Holy Virgin's sacred face / completed with his

living brush: / Enraptured by his art / he fell on his knees before the painting! / But soon this miraculous impulse / weakened in his young breast / and weary and mute / he began to forget the heavenly fire': M. Yu. Lermontov, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy v 5-i tomakh, Moscow and Leningrad, 1936-37, vol. I, p. 4.

36 'Like dawn's ray, Lelya's roses / so lovely is the colour of her cheeks; / as in Raphael's Madonna / her silence speaks ... / But what will the world not destroy?' Ibid., p. 340. The same thing, it appears, is happening to 'little Nina' in Lermontov's unfinished poem of 1839, Skazka dlya detey. Her profile is described as more beautiful than any ever traced by 'the lead of Raphael's pencil or the brush of Perugino': ibid., vol. 3, pp. 425-26.

23



354 IRENE PEARSON

Lermontov's youthful prose attempt of the same year describes a young woman with a 'rosy, fantastic little head, worthy of the brush of Raphael, with a childish half-asleep, half-joyful, inexpressible smile on her lips', leaning on her elderly father.37 In this case, the destruction of beauty is physical: both of them are soon after killed by robber-brigands.

IV One turns to Gogol' with increased understanding of his artistic ideals and hyperbolic descriptions of female beauty. In his early essay 'Zhenshchina' ('Woman', I831) Alkinoya's appearance is like an epiphany, and the young man falls at her feet in reverence. Gogol"s personal acquaintance with Zhukovsky and Pushkin in the period I831-34 must have reinforced his belief that beauty can create harmony out of chaos. On the other hand, his article of I834 on Bryullov's painting The Last Day of Pompeii shows how highly Gogol' valued external brilliance and strong emotions expressed in splendid detail:

His woman is glowing, but she is not a woman of Raphael, with refined, imperceptible, angelic features - she is a passionate woman, a spark- ling, southern Italian in all the glory of the mezzogiorno, powerful, robust, ablaze with all the splendour of beauty, with all the power of beauty ... And this beautiful woman, this crown of creation, the ideal of the earth, must perish in the general destruction, along with the lowest despicable creature which was not worthy to crawl at her feet.38

In fact, Gogol' prefered Bryullov, who depicted every object from great to small with meticulous care, to Raphael, who, Gogol' said, usually painted only the faces, leaving his apprentices to finish the rest. These sentiments foreshadow in a way the well-known contrast at the beginning of Chapter 7 of Dead Souls (I842), between the acclaimed writer who chooses subjects that reveal man's high dignity and the bold but unrecognized writer who discloses the terrible triviality of men's lives.39

Gogol' also loved the art of A. A. Ivanov, whom he met in Rome in I838. Bryullov and Ivanov shared with Gogol' a high respect for Raphael as a painter and an artistic guide. Bryullov was very impressed with the Sistine Madonna on a visit to Dresden in I822; when Ivanov was there in i830, he made a pencil sketch of her and

37 Ibid., vol. 5, p. 98. 38 N. V. Gogol', Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy v '4-i tomakh, Leningrad, I937-52 (hereafter PSS), vol. 8, pp. I I I-I3. 39 Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 133-34.



RAPHAEL BY RUSSIAN WRITERS 355 the Child's heads which would always hang in his study.40 At the same time, each wanted to express contemporary themes in his own way. Piskaryov in Nevskiy prospekt (i834) cannot accept that the beautiful stranger is not Perugino's Bianca, not the subject of a painting which would silently inspire him with her loveliness, but a prostitute, and a vulgar one at that. An artist with such a blind spot for reality, Gogol' seems to be saying, will not survive.

Naturally, Gogol "s appreciation of Raphael became much deeper and more concrete while he was in Rome. He wrote to N. Ya. Prokopovich that only in Rome could one find out the real nature of Raphael, 'whose name we are accustomed to utter and who is, for those of us who have not been here, an ideal being and a myth of sublime art'.41 He delighted in showing friends around Rome's art treasures, and his itinerary for Smirnova's visit exhaustively covers Raphael's works not only as a painter but also as an architect.42 Back in Russia, he commissioned Ivanov's pupil I. S. Shapovalov to make copies of the group of women from Raphael's fresco Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple (I5 I I-I 4) and of Christ's head from his Entombment (I507) and Transfiguration (I520) . Therefore one is not surprised to discover that art is treated in a more abstract way in the first edition of Portret ('The Portrait', I834), which includes a parallel with Raphael's 'vision': the Virgin appears to the artist in a dream while he is toiling in spiritual anguish to paint her image. The I842 edition of Portret, on the other hand, discusses in much more depth the essence of morally inspiring art and how it can be realized. Raphael's name is encountered only in that version, and is repeated a number of times. The passages quoted below do not occur in the earlier version at all.

At the beginning of Portret, the young artist Chartkov's taste is just starting to develop: 'He still did not understand all the depth of Raphael.'44 Even less, however, is that understanding to be found in society. The mother of Chartkov's first sitter, a self-styled 'great admirer of painting', had rushed through all the art galleries of Italy with her lorgnette; ominously, she cannot discuss art in Russian. She is clearly one of those Russian tourists 'talking about monu- ments, stones, Raphaels' at whose expense Gogol' and Ivanov often joked in the evenings.45 As a fashionable artist, Chartkov

40 L S. Turgenev v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov, comp. S. M. Petrov and V. G. Fridlyand, Moscow, I 969, vol. I, p. 534; M. Alpatov, Aleksandr Andreyevich Ivanov: Zhizn' i tvorchestvo, Moscow, I956, vol. I, p. 48 and vol. 2, p. 284.

41 Gogol', PSS, vol. I i, p. IOO. 42 Ibid., vol. 9, p. 490. 43 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 349, 353. See also V. V. Gippius, N. V. Gogol': Materialy i issle-

dovaniya, Moscow and Leningrad, 1936, vol. I, pp. 36, 128. 44 Gogol', PSS, vol. 3, p. 85. 45 Gogol' v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov, ed. S. Mashinsky, Moscow, I952, p. 324.



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sharply denigrates the old masters in comparison with modern painters:

he maintained that far too many merits were ascribed to the earlier artists, that all of them before Raphael painted not figures, but herrings; that only in the imagination of viewers did the idea exist that the presence of something sacred could be seen in them; that even Raphael himself did not paint everything well and many of his works retained their fame only by tradition; ... and that real brilliance, power of brushwork and colouring must be sought only nowadays, in the present century. Here naturally, in an involuntary way, the conversation came round to himself too.46

In other words, disrespect for masters of the past results in egoism. Later, as a pillar of the Academy of Arts, Chartkov picks up Raphael as a symbol of conventional wisdom, a stick with which to beat the younger generation. 'Already he was beginning, as always happens in a man's venerable years, to side forcefully with Raphael and the old masters, -not because he had fully convinced himself of their high merit, but in order to throw them in the teeth of young artists.'47

The moment of truth in Chartkov's life follows, when he sees a painting by a former comrade who had been living in Rome. The original description of how this painter had renounced everything for his art was supplemented in I842 to make the allusion to Ivanov unmistakable: he did not bother about social niceties or his un- fashionable clothes. A frequent visitor to art galleries, he used to stand for hours at a time before works of the great painters; 'in the end, he retained as his only master the divine Raphael', from whom he learned 'the majestic concept of a creative work, the powerful beauty of a thought, the lofty charm of a celestial brush'.48 In the painting sent from Italy, everything seemed joined together:

study of Raphael, reflected in the lofty nobility of the postures, and study of Correggio, radiated by the definitive perfection of the brushwork. But most authoritatively of all could be seen the strength of the creative work, already contained in the soul of the artist himself. The lowest object in the picture was imbued with it; in everything, a law and an inner strength were attained.49

46 Gogol', PSS, vol. 3, pp. 107-8. 47 Ibid., p. IO9. 48 Ibid., p. I I I. 49 Ibid., p. I I2. Nevertheless, in an article on the reworking of Portret A. L. Volynsky

argues that in Rome Gogol' realized the close links between the art of the Italian Renais- ance and the diabolically real portrait of the usurer, and that the former was quite different from the purely Christian art Gogol' extolled: Bor'ba za idealizm, St Petersburg, I900, vol. I, pp. 259-67.




Seeming to rise higher and higher, brighter and more miraculous, it unites all the silent spectators in an emotion so moving that they are about to weep. The sense of witnessing a divine apparition in the true work of art, as though a single heavenly moment were frozen forever, is just the same as Zhukovsky described in 'Rafaeleva Madonna'. The experience is repeated in the second part of Portret, moreover. The artist B.'s father, although self-taught, instinctively comprehends the importance of a 'simple little head' by Raphael and dislikes hypocrites who pretend to know more about art than they really do.50 After years of monastic penitence for the evil usurer's portrait, he creates a Nativity of Christ before whose harmonious beauty and spiritual power all the monks fall to their knees.

Gogol"s fragment Rim ('Rome', written in i842) also differen- tiates between true and false art. The wandering prince, as he looks at the art in Italian churches, feels an affinity for them already in his soul.

And before this majestic, beautiful splendour, how low the splendour of the nineteenth century seemed to him now, a petty, worthless splendour, removed to the sphere of activity of goldsmiths, upholsterers, paper- hangers, joiners and a heap of workmen, and depriving the world of Raphaels, Titians and Michelangelos, reducing art to a craft.5'

Like Alkinoya in Zhenshchina, Annunziata, the beauty with whom the prince falls in love after a momentary glimpse, is 'not so much a human being as the embodiment of a spiritual ideal; she appears on earth so that men might carry her image in their hearts and thus sweeten their existence'.52 In true Gogolian style, however, Rim is provided with light relief in the form of a 'fat Roman', a wine- grower named Rafael Tomacelli whose street-fighting is contrasted with Raphael's actual character, just as in NAevskiy prospekt Schiller and Hoffmann are a tinsmith and a bootmaker. The geniuses of the past have indeed become craftsmen.

In the end Gogol' never managed to synthesize the ideal with the real; when he turned towards asceticism, art seemed to fade into the background. In Vybrannyye mesta iz perepiski s druzyami (Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, I847) one is left merely with appeals for money to support his self-denying friends: F. I. Jordan, who had 'sacrificed years' engraving Raphael's Trans- figuration, and Ivanov, whose 'selfless life' was responsible for the artistic virtues of his magnum opus, The Appearance of Christ to the People (Gogol' called it the best painting since the time of Raphael and da

50 Ibid., p. 126-27. 51 Ibid., pp. 235-36. 52 Richard Byrns, 'Gogol' and the Feminine Myth' (Slavic and East European Studies,

vol. 20-21, Quebec, I975/6, p. 47).



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Vinci -and, of course, among those turning towards Christ it included a figure bearing Gogol"s features!).53 According to Jesse Zeldin, Gogol"s 'vision of a harmoniously created universe... could not be attained because the modern world would not allow it - and he came finally, against his will, to realize this'.54 In fact, Gogol"s aim was not to impose a Renaissance ideal on modern reality, but to unite the two in a coherent personal statement - as his attitude to Raphael reveals.

V Herzen consistently placed Raphael among the greatest artists of all time. He often compared his fiancee Natalya Zakharina, in letters to her of I836-37, with Raphael's Madonna, particularly with regard to commissioning a portrait of her: 'Raphael, that Raphael who is called divine, dared to give the Madonna the face of la Fornarina, his mistress - and Italy was silent, marvelling. Well now, you gentlemen with brushes, here is Natasha for you; she is an angel, not a woman from whom the divine imprint has been rubbed out by impure embraces.'55 In I839 he wrote that he had tried to recognize which paintings in the Hermitage were by Raphael without looking at the inscriptions and could tell only one: The Holy Family. 'The longer I scrutinized the madonna's features, the more joyful my soul became, and tears welled up; what gentleness and infinitude in her look, what love streams from it!'56 The following year Herzen remarked that she gave him the impression of being 'simply a girl, a woman - a sad and generous soul'57 who gradually grows into a true Mother of God. This concept of Raphael's madonnas as 'transfigured maidens' rather than supernatural beings plays an important role in Chapter 24 of Part 3 of Byloye i dumy (My Past and Thoughts, I852-68); recalling his son Aleksandr's birth in I839, Herzen analyses the Sistine Madonna:

Her inner world is destroyed; they assure her that her son is the Son of God, that she is the Mother of God; she looks up with a sort of nervous ardour, with a magnetic clairvoyance, seeming to say, 'Take him, he is not mine'. But at the same time she clasps him to her as though, if it were possible, she would run far away with him somewhere and would

53 Gogol', PSS, vol. 8, PP. 223, 335. Ivanov's picture in fact aroused mostly negative criticism at first; V. P. Botkin pointed out that it was almost impossible to admire any new painting in Rome with Raphael's Stanze only two steps away: Turgenev i krug 'Sovremen- nika': Neizdannyye materialy 1847-I86r, Moscow and Leningrad, 1930, p. 103.

54 J. Zeldin, Nikolai Gogol"s Quest for Beauty: An Exploration into His Wtorks, Lawrence, 1978, p. 197-

55 A. I. Gertsen, Sobraniye sochineniy v 30-i tomakh, Moscow, 1954-66 (hereafter SS), vol. 21, p. 13I; see also pp. I02, I99, and ibid., vol. 22, p. 22.

56 Ibid., vol. 22, pp. 66-67. 57 Ibid., p. 88.




start simply to caress him, to feed with her breast not the saviour of the world, but her son.58

Herzen strikes a new tragic note in his view of Mary as a threatened individual, a mother about to lose her child, for however great a cause; it is an interpretation vastly different from Zhukovsky's vision of a tranquil goddess.

Ogaryov's opinion about Raphael was similar to his friend's. He wrote in a letter to Ye. V. Sukhovo-Kobylina shortly after visiting the Dresden Gallery in I 842: 'The chaste madonna does not know what has happened to her, but she feels that something great has happened and that the child in her arms is a divine child.'59 Several weeks later, recollecting the 'moment of wondrous pleasure' he experienced on weeping before her, Ogaryov determined to draft an article (never written) about the Sistine Madonna and Raphael's various attempts to depict this ideal. Noting the resemblance among Raphael's madonnas, Ogaryov none the less shuddered at the thought that they were modelled on his mistress: 'I saw ... la Fornarina in the Hermitage: she is a passionate and voluptuous woman, a complete opposite to the Madonna.'60

Unfortunately, Ogaryov's comparison is not a fair one, 'if one assumes that the painting described as being of la Fornarina is the one now generally believed to be by epigones of Raphael, Giulio Romano and Raffaellino da Colle, which under the title 'Lady at her Toilet' resides at the Fine Arts Museum in Moscow, having originally hung in the Hermitage. This courtesan has a hard, unlovely expression which scarcely conveys the effect of voluptuousness despite her nudity (quite unconcealed by a bit of transparent drapery).61 Ogaryov was tlhus probably barking up the wrong tree: the Hermi- tage painting and Raphael's madonnas are complete opposites, above all in plastic terms.

VI V. G. Belinsky - 'Vissarion furioso' - headed the iconoclasts. Reservations about Western European art had been broached previously by Russians, however. In the early I 830S students at Moscow University (including Belinsky himself, Ogaryov, Stasyule- vich and K. S. Aksakov) flocked to hear the stimulating lectures of N. I. Nadezhdin, who claimed that 'Raphael's Madonnas are too

58 Ibid., vol. 8, p. 387. 59 Literalurnoye nasledstvo, vol. 6i: Gertsen i Ogaryov I, Moscow, 1953, pp. 866-67. 60 'Iz perepiski nedavnikh deyateley' (Russkaya mysl', Moscow, I889, Book I I, pp. I2-13) . 61 Frederick Hartt, Giulio Romano, New Haven, 1958, vol. I, pp. 57-58 and vol. 2,

plate no. 1 14.



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ideal'.62 N. V. Stankevich admitted privately that when he first saw the Sistine Madonna in 1837, having been prepared by Zhukovsky's article for an uplifting experience, 'My heart fell'.63

Belinsky undoubtedly had a narrower range of interests than some of his famous contemporaries. An article by A. Bakrushinsky about Belinsky and the Sistine Madonna opens with a comment on the critic's almost total disregard of the visual arts. 'It was as though the Petersburg Hermitage did not exist for Belinsky.'64Belinskymentioned Raphael in several of his early articles, in fairly conventional contexts. A piece on Gogol"s short stories (I835) refers to Raphael's vision of the Madonna, although Belinsky interpreted it in the more realistic sense of a poet's inward gestation of living images. His article of I841 on the state of Russian literature in the preceding year bemoans the low level of artistic taste in his native country, exclaiming: 'Children we are, children! We do not yet need the refined creations of Raphael, but toys with bright pretty colours, with shiny gilt!'65

Belinsky's personal impression of the Sistine Madonna was quite different. In May 1847 he reluctantly visited the Dresden Gallery with Turgenev, and went again with Annenkov in July. Interestingly, only then did he record his sharply critical feelings about the Madonna, in a letter of I9 July (new style) to V. P. Botkin:

What nonsense the Romantics have written about her, especially Zhukovsky. In my opinion there is nothing romantic in her face, nor anything classical either. This is not the mother of the Christian God: this is an aristocratic woman, a princess royal, ideal sublime du comme il faut . . . she looks at us with cold favour, afraid both of being soiled by our gaze and of distressing us plebeians by turning away from us. The child she holds in her arms is more candid than she: her proudly tightened underlip is barely noticeable, while in him the whole mouth breathes scorn for us racailles. In his eyes can be seen not the future God of love, peace, forgiveness and salvation, but the ancient Old Testament God of wrath and fury, of punishment and retribution. But what nobility, what grace of the brush! One never tires of looking at it! I involuntarily recalled Pushkin: the same nobility, the same grace of expression, together with the same truth and austerity of outline! No wonder Pushkin was so fond of Raphael: they are akin by nature.66

62 N. I. Nadezhdin, Literaturnaya kritika: Estetika, Moscow, 1972, p. 371; see V. G. Belinsky v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov, comp. A. A. Kozlovsky and K. I. Tyun'kin, Moscow, 1977, p. I I3-

63 Perepiska Nikolaya Vladimirovicha Stankevicha, 1830-40, Moscow, 1914, p. 392, quoted in Yu. Mann, Russkava estetika (182o-183o-yye gody), Moscow, I969, p. 242.

84 'Vstrecha Belinskogo s Sikstinskoy Madonnoy', Venok Belinskomu, ed. N. K. Piksanov, Moscow, 1924, p. lO9.

65 Belinsky, PSS, vol. 3, p. 419; see also vol. i, p. 286. f66 Ibid., vol. 12, p. 384; see also vol. 10, p. 248 on the parallel between Raphael and

Pushkin.



RAPHAEL BY RUSSIAN WRITERS 36I

Belinsky, it should be noted, could not help admiring the spirit which emanated from the painting.

The critic's survey of Russian literature for I847 made public his opinion of the Madonna, although he softened his tone and admitted her after all to the canons of classical beauty at least:

Raphael's Madonna and the madonna described by Zhukovsky under the name of Raphael's are two completely different pictures having nothing in common, nothing similar between them. Raphael's Madonna is a strictly classical figure and not in the least romantic. Her face expresses that beauty which exists independently, not borrowing its charm from any kind of moral expression in the face ... There is something severe and reserved in her gaze; there is no goodness or mercy, but neither is there pride or scorn, but rather a kind of condescension mindful of its own grandeur.67

Annenkov was among those whom Belinsky shocked by his icono- clasm, but he correctly perceived that Belinsky's rebellion against Raphael's work was equivocal: Belinsky 'was the first, it seems, not to have gone into raptures over its celestial tranquillity and indifference, but was on the contrary terrified by them, which was also an indirect acknowledgement of the genius of the master who created this type'.68 The ambiguous picture of Belinsky's attitude to Raphael throws some light on the vexed question of his relationship to Western European culture in general. As Turgenev summed it up: 'Belinsky was as much an idealist as an abnegator; he negated in the name of an ideal.'69

An engaging aside to the history of how Russians have reacted to the Sistine Madonna is an apocryphal story about Bakunin. It is said that while Bakunin was aiding the short-lived Dresden rebellion in May I849, he proposed that they should hang the Madonna on the barricades because the Germans were 'too cultured' to fire at Raphael.70 The legend does raise a provocative comparison with the native Russian tradition of carrying holy icons in front of a procession bearing a petition to the authorities (it has been suggested that the Sistine Madonna was, unusually for Raphael, painted on canvas so that it could serve as a processional standard). The consequences were serious if icon-led petitioners were fired upon; such events precipitated the Pugachov Rebellion and the I905 Revolution.71

67 Ibid., vol. I0, p. 308. 68 P. V. Annenkov, Literaturnyye vospominaniya, Moscow, I960, p. 366. 69 I. S. Turgenev, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy i pisem v 28-i tomakh, Moscow and Leningrad,

1960-68 (hereafter PSS), Soch., vol. 14, p. 42. 70 The story is asserted as true in Gertsen, SS, vol. I I, p. 356, and in Nicolas Berdyaev,

The Russian Idea, trans. R. M. French, London, 1947, p. 147, but E. H. Carr calls it a 'picturesque legend' in his Michael Bakunin, New York and London, 1937, p. I9'.

71 Pierre Pascal, The Religion of the Russian People, London and Oxford, 1976, p. 23.



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Z. Ralli reported that when he asked Bakunin whether he would put a Raphael in front of the Russian army, Bakunin replied: 'Well, brother, no! A German is a civilised person, but the Russian is a savage, he'll start shooting not only at Raphael, but at the very Mother of God herself, if the authorities so command. Against Russian soldiers with Cossacks it would be irresponsible to use such means - you wouldn't protect the people and you'd destroy Raphael !'72 Bakunin was obviously joking, and his remark here does not necessarily confirm the Dresden story, but the ambiguous implications of the story become compounded: if the Sistine Madonna was an 'icon' of Western culture, did it then have value for religious as opposed to bellicose Russians? Or were both 'savages' equally prepared to annihilate a foreign treasure?

VII As is well known, Chernyshevsky argued in his dissertation of I855 that art is just a surrogate for reality. He went on to claim that even in the world of art Raphael should not be put on a pedestal, since other works are enjoyable too (Chernyshevsky gives as an example the sentimental paintings of Greuze) and since even Raphael has been reproached for lack of anatomical knowledge.73 Another of his articles on aesthetics remarks that yet one more description adds nothing to the works themselves and only repeats what has already been done; the modern critic therefore has 'no choice but to admire only living people and real life, which are forgotten in the aesthetics that talk about the Farnese Hercules and the pictures of Raphael'.74 Chernyshevsky's materialistic comment that 'Raphael's most ideal figures turn out to be portraits of real people'75 cuts both ways, however, since it implies a high regard for Raphael as opposed, say, to an icon. All in all, though, Chernyshevsky put Raphael very low on his list of priorities. In i86o he found it amazing that in the present unsatisfactory state of affairs, people could still assert that it was 'better to enjoy Raphael's paintings than to have healthy food'.76 On such views as Chernyshevsky's Turgenev was to base Bazarov's opinions in Fathers and Sons (I862). In a fragmentary novel Chernyshevsky wrote in I863, a landlady urges her guest to go and view a very beautiful girl: 'You see, she was still only a girl of twelve when people began to look at her as they do at a picture

72 M. A. Bakunin, Sobraniye sochineniy ipisem, Moscow, 1934-35, vol. 4, p. 537. 73 N. G. Chernyshevsky, Polnqve sobraniye sochineniy v I5-i tomakh (i dop.), Moscow,

1939-53, vol. 2, pp. 5I, 38 (in 'Esteticheskiye otnosheniya iskusstva k deystvitel'nosti'). 74 Ibid., p. I58. 75 Ibid., vol. 3, p. 227. 76 Ibid., vol. 9, p. 65.




by Raphael' -to which the guest replies with all the pompous solemnity of his author that one should not look at a living woman like a picture.77

In I858 Dobrolyubov noted:

We are ashamed to see things as they really are; we always try to beautify, to ennoble them, and often tie on ourselves a burden which we cannot even carry ... Who has not adorned in the rosy colours of idealism a simple, very understandable liking for a woman? And finally, who among educated people - we have our readers in mind - has not spoken with confidence and sometimes even with rapture about Homer or Shakespeare, perhaps about Beethoven, or about Raphael and his Madonna; but did many of them understand, in the depths of their souls, what they themselves were saying? No, whatever you say, the desire to play the idealist is very strong in us ...78

One can hardly help being struck by how closely this passage resembles not only Chernyshevsky's thesis but also the attitude Tolstoy was to adopt some forty years later in What is Art?; Tolstoy even used the same 'great names' as examples of artists whom people only pretend to appreciate. And never mind that a pedant proves a woman's expression to be less eloquent than that of Raphael's madonnas, Dobrolyubov wrote several years later, because her living expression is more attractive than 'dead' comparisons with art.79

The aesthetic nihilism of Pisarev also asserted the gap between culture and life. Pisarev's notorious article of I865, 'Razrusheniye estetiki' ('The Destruction of Aesthetics'), echoed Dobrolyubov's argument: 'Imagine that viewing paintings by Raphael and ancient statues has enflamed your imagination to such an extent that all the live women you meet seem plain to you ... but however great your dissatisfaction with them, Russian women will not grow any prettier because of it.'80 Pisarev furthermore cited Raphael as proof of his contention that true art feeds on and serves luxury; for having been sponsored by the Church and for working his frescoes around existing architectural elements, Raphael is branded a 'lackey of luxury' who 'very willingly prostituted his creative thought'. This attack was meant to bring down the temple of the fine arts, which could not stand without its 'high priest' Raphael.81

Pisarev's deliberately scandalous statement that he would rather be a Russian shoemaker than a Russian Raphael did not lead him

7 Ibid., vol. I2, p. 282 (in 'Povesti v povesti'). 78 N. A. Dobrolyubov, Sobraniye sochineniy v 9-i tomakh, Moscow and Leningrad, I96I-64,

vol. 2, p. 439. See also vol. 5, p. 200. 7 Ibid., vol. 6, p. 303. 80 D. I. Pisarev, Sochineniya v 4-kh tomakh, Moscow, 1955-56, vol. 3, p. 421. 81 Ibid., p. 426.



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to give up writing and make shoes instead, as E. Lampert points out;82 had culture been more widespread in Russia, there would have been no need to set the two activities in such strict opposition. In I864 Pisarev wrote that 'the great Beethoven', 'the great Raphael' and 'the great chef Dussault' were all on the same level, all producing various diversions enjoyed by various people - again, a foretaste of the later Tolstoy. Pisarev also posited a gradual shedding of conven- tions in aesthetic criticism: according to him, Belinsky was ready to deny the utility of Corneille and Racine, but 'even Belinsky, for all his genius, would have been horrified had Bazarov told him that "Raphael is not worth a brass farthing".'83

VIII As the nihilist prototype, it was almost Bazarov's duty to repudiate the worth of an artist so highly revered by previous generations and by all the established authorities. Turgenev himself, however ambi- valent his attitude to Bazarov, consistently expressed a warm, even passionate admiration for Raphael, whose spirit A. F. Koni saw in Turgenev's 'gentle and captivating contours'.84 In his writings, Turgenev associated an amazing range of things with Raphael, from a translation of Goethe's Faust to a chessmaster's movements to the drawing of a surgical device for his spine !85

In Tat'yana Borisovna i yeyo plemyannik ('Tatyana Borisovna and her Nephew', I848) Turgenev introduces Benevolensky as a repre- sentative of the type of mediocre person with an inexplicable love of the arts. It is agonizing to converse with these 'real blockheads smeared with honey. For instance, they never call Raphael Raphael or Correggio Correggio: "the divine Sanzio", "the inimitable de Allegris", they say, invariably drawling the vowels.'86 Such people fancy themselves magnanimous patrons of the arts. Benevolensky, whose very name suggests his benevolent (though misguided) urges, takes Andrey under his wing and manages to return him to his aunt as a rude, lazy dunce with hardly the slightest trace of talent. The devil-may-care attitude suits only the greatest artists, Turgenev concludes; in second-rate ones it is unbearable. Gamlet Shchigrovskogo uyezda ('Hamlet of the Shchigry District', I849) describes the

82 Ibid., p. 115; see E. Lampert, Sons against Fathers: Studies in Russian Radicalism and Revolution, Oxford, 1965, pp. 330-33.

83 Pisarev, Sochineniya, vOl. 3, p. 62. 84 I. A. Goncharov v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov, ed. N. K. Piksanov, Leningrad, 1969,

P. 249- 85 Turgenev, PSS, Soch., vol. I, p. 249; K. P. Obodovsky, 'Rasskazy o Turgeneve'

(Istoricheskiy vestnik, vol. 5I, St Petersburg, Feb. I893, p. 365); Tourguenev, Nouvelle correspondance inedite, ed. Alexandre Zviguilsky, Paris, 1972, pp. 42-43.

86 Turgenev, PSS, Soch., vol. 4, p. 206.



RAPHAEL BY RUSSIAN WRITERS 365 typical superfluous man's trip to the 'finishing school' of Western Europe. His own rapturous reaction to Raphael's Transfiguration and other art works he calls 'a violent fit'; 'in the evenings I would scribble a few verses, I started a diary; in a word, there too I behaved like everybody else. Whereas just think how easy it is to be original. For instance, I don't understand anything about painting and sculpture ... It would have been simple for me to say so aloud ... No, impossible!'87

In Rome in I857, Turgenev complained about the vogue, among the many inferior Russian artists there, of denigrating Raphael. Apart from Ivanov, Turgenev wrote to Tolstoy, 'our other artists are fools, infected with Bryullovism - and ungifted, that is, not exactly without gifts, they all have means, but do not know how to make anything out of these resources. They live with whores, curse Raphael - and that is all. Russian art does not yet exist'.88 Two letters of late I857 to Annenkov say essentially the same; one of them also mentions Turgenev's trip with Botkin to see the half-ruined Villa Madama, erected according to Raphael's designs: 'The soul is elevated by such sights - and the artistic strings in it ring out more purely, and more tenderly.'89

Turgenev depicts a second-rate Russian artist abroad in a story of the same year, Asya. Gagin has a 'true Russian nature', lacking in fire, and is unwilling to dedicate to his vocation the necessary hours of 'grinding toil'. Like his literary descendant Vronsky (whom Tolstoy also calls Gagin in the first draft of Anna Karenina) he is concerned with the semblance of artistic activity rather than its essence: he worries over which system to adopt, wears a round Van Dyck hat and a smock to go sketching, and when painting raises his hand high in the air. It is with Gagin's half-sister Asya, however, that the narrator associates a work by Raphael. Unable to sleep, he thinks of this 'capricious girl' and whispers, 'she's built like the little Raphael Galatea in the Farnesina'.90 The Triumph of Galatea (c. I5I2) in the Villa Farnesina near Rome is centred on the vigorously twisting body of the classical nymph, frozen in her energetic escape from tritons and bow-wielding cupids. Although the composition is firmly set in two triangles with the same base, Galatea's contrapposto seems to agitate all the figures surrounding her into violent motion. In the same way, Asya's mysteriotus changes of mood throw everyone around her into turmoil, while the story as a whole crystallizes a fleeting moment when love is a possibility.

87 Ibid., pp. 286-88. 88 Ibid., Pis'ma, vol. 3, p. 171. 89 Ibid., p. 174. 90 Ibid., Soch., vol. 7, p. 85.



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In i86i, breaking his work on Fathers and Sons, Turgenev cast his mind back to an excursion with Botkin and Ivanov in October i 857 and wrote Poyezdka v Al'bano i Fraskati ('A Trip to Albano and Frascati'). He referred again to the iconoclastic attitude to Raphael of Russian artists living in Rome91 and made it clear that Ivanov, for all his strengths, was not in the same league as Raphael: 'He did not number among the harmonious and original creative artists (we do not yet have any of them in Russia).'92 These reminiscences are surely connected with Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov's outburst in Fathers and Sons:

'I have been told that in Rome our artists do not set foot in the Vatican. Raphael they practically consider a fool because, they say, he's an authority; but they themselves are disgustingly impotent and sterile and don't themselves have the imagination to go beyond "A Girl at a Fountain", however hard they try! And the girl is wretchedly painted, too. In your opinion they're fine fellows, isn't that right?' 'In my opinion', retorted Bazarov, 'Raphael is not worth a brass farthing, and they're no better than he is!'93

Bazarov takes the stance of a Chernyshevsky; no work of art can be better than the real thing.

Turgenev shared Pavel Petrovich's belief in the dangers of negat- ing the great figures of European civilization: Russia could not skip the difficult but fundamental step of learning from the geniuses of the past if she wished to develop her own national culture. His speech to commemorate the 3ooth anniversary of Shakespeare's birth notes that in the sixteenth century, when Shakespeare, Raphael and other great men lived in Europe, Ivan the Terrible was mass- acring the Russians.94 Dovol'no ('Enough'), also of I864, sets ancient art treasures above social principles and speaks of barbarians destroying that art.95 Dostoyevsky was to put almost identical statements into the mouth of Stepan Verkhovensky in The Devils, (I87I), although significantly he substituted Raphael's Sistine Madonna for Turgenev's references to classical Greek statues.96

Spring Torrents (I87I) contrasts the classical Italian ideal of pure beauty in Gemma with Maria Polozova's rather coarse, fleshy but seductive Russian beauty. The man in between is Dmitry Sanin, like Turgenev twenty-two years old in I840, passing

91 Ibid., vol. I4, p. 86. 92 Ibid., p. 94. 93 Ibid., vol. 8, p. 247. 94 Ibid., vol. I5, p. 48. 95 Ibid., vol. 9, pp. I I9-20. 96 F. M. Dostoyevsky, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy v 30 tomakh, vol. lo, Leningrad,

1974, pp. 266, 372. Cf. Dostoyevsky: materialy i issledovaniya, Leningrad, I974, vol. I, p. 270 n.




through Frankfurt on the way back to Russia from Italy. Perhaps the ideal stood out more strikingly against the background of Germany's petit-bourgeois mentality, exemplified in Gemma's fianc6, just as Gemma was framed by the dark window during the sudden whirlwind. 'Sanin was particularly struck by the elegant beauty of her hands; when she adjusted or supported her dark, glossy curls with them - he could not tear his eyes away from her fingers, supple and long and separated one from the other like those of Raphael's Fornarina.'97 Did Turgenev have in mind here a specific painting? The passage has been regarded as an allusion to a portrait in Rome's Barberini Palace (c. I5I8-I9), possibly designed by Raphael but most probably executed by Giulio Romano.

The Barberini Fornarina, which though more attractive is similar to the Moscow one in its pose, angle of the eyes and state of undress, does have quite long, clearly demarcated fingers. One might with equal validity, however, look to Sebastiano del Piombo's alleged portrait of Raphael's mistress (I512) in the Tribune of the Uffizi in Florence; her fingers too are separated one from another, although their length is obscured by being plunged into the panther skin slung over her left shoulder.98 Louis Viardot, whose judgement of art works Turgenev valued most highly, followed the contemporary belief that this painting was by Raphael (while expressing the doubts of some authorities) and called it 'une de ces ceuvres &tonnantes que nulle description, nul 6loge ne peuvent suffisamment faire connaltre et appr6cier'.99 In Turgenev's time the lovely Donna Velata with its long delicate fingers was not yet definitely regarded as Raphael's, but he had admired it in i 858 and recognized in it the model for Raphael's madonnas.'00 While the context of the reference in Spring Torrents makes it likely that any particular painting alluded to would have been in Italy, where Sanin had travelled so recently, Turgenev may have been suggesting rather a composite image of La Fornarina. In that case one should also consider the Moscow picture and contemporary ones such as Ingres's four versions of Raphael and La Fornarina (i813-50). All in all, the latter hypothesis seems closer to the mark.

Two passages in Virgin Soil (I876) which mention Raphael appear near the beginning and the end of the book. They are both outbursts directed at indifferent radicals by under-sized Paklin against an art critic called Skoropikhin. Like V. V. Stasov, a critic

97 Turgenev, PSS, Soch., vol. i I, p. 29. 98 Giorgio Bernardini, Sebastiano del Piombo, Bergamo, 1908, p. 75. For the Barberini

painting, see Dussler, op. cit., plate 93. 19 L. Viardot, Les Musies d'Italie, Paris, I859, p. 172.

100 Turgenev, PSS, Pis'ma, vol. 3, pp. 204, 554-55.



368 IRENE PEARSON

who vociferously upheld the right of Russian artists to disparage Raphael, Skoropikhin (as his name implies) is apparently in a hurry to elbow aside all past works of art. He praises inferior contemporary Russian paintings to the skies simply because they are 'not Western art', and the younger generation mindlessly echoes his opinions. Paklin argues, in a polemic with Chernyshevskian ideas, that no one repudiates scientific authorities of the past: 'You are ready to acknowledge their authority, while Raphael and Mozart are fools? ... The laws of art are more difficult to detect than the laws of science . . . I agree; but they do exist - and whoever fails to see them is blind, voluntarily or involuntarily - it's all the same!'l But Paklin's tirades remain completely ineffectual.

In the same novel, the noblewoman Valentina Sipyagina is first introduced in the charmingly picturesque setting of her home as 'a tall woman of about thirty, with nut-brown hair, a dark but fresh, even complexion, reminiscent of the Sistine Madonna's appearance, with marvellous deep velvety eyes'.102 On the other hand, the reader soon learns that she is no ideal creature i la Zhukovsky: she can make her half-closed eyes, 'eyes worthy of Raphael',"03 shine at will with caressing sweetness or with painful disgust. Marianna tells Nezhdanov that Valentina is aware of her resemblance to a madonna and wants everyone to bow down to her: 'However aristocratic she may imagine herself, she is simply a scandalmonger and a show-off, is your Raphael Madonna !'104 The superficiality of Valentina's beauty is gradually unmasked; in the end she does not have even the dignity of the aristocratic woman comme il faut which Belinsky accorded the Sistine Madonna.

By the I 870s it had become almost customary for Russian travellers to express openly their disappointment in the Sistine Madonna. Turgenev jokingly compared the sofa in front of the Madonna, on which visitors sat glassy-eyed for the prescribed couple of hours, to a torture instrument of the Inquisition.105 Yet in a letter of I878, more than fifty years after Zhukovsky and Kyukhel'beker had declared the Sistine Madonna to be the epitome of idealistic art, Turgenev admitted the overwhelming impact the painting's idealism had on him ('l'idealisme de cette ... Madone me foudroie') and called it the 'last word in Art'.106

101 Ibid., Soch., vol. I2, p. I9; see also Turgenev v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov (note 40 above), vol. 2, pp. I I3-I6.

102 Ibid., p. 36. 108 Ibid., p. 51. 104 Ibid., p. 95. 105 Alpatov, Ivanov (see note 40), vol. I, p. 48. 106 Lettres in6dites de Tourguenev a Pauline Viardot et di sa famille, ed. Henri Granjard and

Alexandre Zviguilsky, Lausanne, 1972, p. 277.



RAPHAEL BY RUSSIAN WRITERS 369 The Russians felt that they had a vital 'new word' to pronounce in

the world. Could the study of Raphael inspire them with eternal values, or was he irrelevant to modern society? Did Raphael portray a transcendental ideal, or was he primarily a humanistic painter who gave his madonnas the form and face of his lower-class mistress? And was the great Russian contribution to be achieved only by gradually assimilating Western Europe's cultural heritage, or was Russia destined to destroy in a huge conflagration all the models of the past, including Raphael, in order that men might live together harmoniously? These questions, which Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy continued to debate and to embody in their literary works, were already posed in essence by the Russian writers of the first half of the nineteenth century.

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Documents

Raphael as Seen by Russian Writers from Zhukovsky to Turgenev