Raphael. The Complete Works. Paintings, Frescoes, Tapestries, Architecture

by Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen, Frank Zöllner, Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen

Raphael (1483–1520) is considered the most important artist of the Italian High Renaissance alongside Michelangelo and Leonardo. In his short lifetime he created around one hundred paintings and numerous frescoes, including nine fresco cycles, on an unsurpassed variety of themes – from sensual female beauties, antique myths and portraits of wealthy Romans and church dignitaries to history cycles and biblical scenes. He produced altarpieces, as well as designing tapestries for the Sistine Chapel and directing the construction of St Peter’s Basilica. His Sistine Madonna is one of the most frequently reproduced religious paintings of all time.

Raphael was a tireless learner, for whom there could be no standing still, no repetition of tried and tested solutions, but only the constant forward thrust of an inexhaustible imagination. He transformed his central theme, the visionary experience of divine grace, into visible pictorial reality. It was his mature work in Rome, and above all the frescoes in the Vatican Palace, that secured him his place in art history. Admired even during his own lifetime as the most modern artist of his day, Raphael’s mastery would pave the way for Mannerism and the Baroque era.

This XXL edition is the most comprehensive work published on Raphael. The volume encompasses in total 112 paintings and all the frescoes, architectural projects and tapestries in many new photographs and numerous details, as well as the most extensive catalogue raisonné of the artist’s oeuvre. A team of Raphael experts introduces the reader also to the fascinating interplay of art and power in the High Renaissance.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

719 pages, Hardcover

Published December 5, 2022

Reviews

[Gonzalo FJ]

Que conste que no me lo he leído entero, pero he gozado con cada uno de sus cuadros, lienzos, dibujos y obras arquitectónicas. Y he ubicado más de 20 localizaciones en Roma con 0bras de Rafael para un futuro épico viaje a Roma. Con sus seis kilos de peso, es sin duda el mejor libro que me he comprado en la vida. Gracias Taschen.

[Harris Silverman]

Raphael: The Complete Works: Paintings, Frescoes, Tapestries, Architecture

Any book that attempts to cover the complete works of Raphael is setting itself an impossible task, simply because his oeuvre is so large, despite the brevity of his life. This book makes a decent fist of it, even if it's not quite perfect.

Along with the outlines of his biography and a constant eye on his influences (and derivations), the book provides useful analyses of much of his work. The most useful and detailed analysis is probably that of the Vatican rooms, even if some other parts of the book are a bit too desultory to be fully satisfying (cf the above-mentioned impossibility of the task at hand). And the analysis of the Vatican work is too complex to really remember in any kind of detail once you've finished reading it, though a vivid impression of the underlying concepts remains. The architecture section is good, if you're interested in that, and the catalogues are extremely detailed and thorough. The bibliography is immense.

Having said all that, it's hard to imagine a one-volume overview of this large body of work doing much better, so if that's what you're looking for, and you're willing to shell out for it, (and you can lift the massive thing) it's a good choice; and of course, the reproductions are fantastic, as always in the Taschen XXL series.