A long look at a great painting
Raphael (nee Raphael Sanzio), Italian, 1483-1520, La Donna Velata or La Velata, c. 1516, (The Woman with a Veil), Oil on canvas, 85 x 64 cm, Collection of Istituti museale della Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale Fiorentino
The charged human presence of Raphael’s La Donna Velata arrests the eye immediately. Raphael rendered his model at life size and fashioned her head and neck to create an uncanny illusion of volume. She gazes from about eye level, alone in small, darkened room at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Walking into the gallery is like coming upon a beautiful woman in a private chamber. She’s glad to see you.
Leonardo's Mona Lisa.
The setting fits. La Donna is Raphael’s sensual, dynamic response to Leonardo’s serene Mona Lisa. Leonardo’s woman is enigmatic, but elegant and stable. La Donna is inviting. She wears a sumptuous, fancy-dress sleeve over a filmy undergarment. A vent in the sleeve has opened into a oval gap that reveals the undergarment, and the folds and shape suggest intimate female anatomy. Her splayed index and middle finger touch the space between her breasts and depress the gauzy fabric. A loose-hanging strand of hair speaks of delight in disorder.
The overall palette seems to be of porcelain skin and eggshell whites and gold. But close viewing reveals reds rising from beneath the surface and worked subtly into highlights. The particular red Raphael mixed into the porcelain cheeks works slowly on the retinae; perhaps the most amazing trick in this painting is the way La Donna seems to blush as you gaze upon her.
And do gaze upon her for a long time. The longer you look, the more you see.
Beyond the astonishing modeling of a human being, Raphael forged a most engaging and creative abstraction. At first, the image seems solidly pyramidal, like the Mona Lisa, but La Donna surges with implied motion.
The whole painting swirls in graceful curves starting at the bottom left and sweeping and scrolling up and around her head. The veil, the sleeve, the golden trim of the sleeve, the reds and deep browns amid the hands and bracelet and shadows, the pink flesh beneath the translucent fabric, the necklace, her delicate jawline and hairline all form strata of the grand curve. A swarm of upward-pointing triangular shapes in the folds of her sleeves adds haste and urgency to the whirl.
The Mona Lisa invites contemplation; La Donna invites action. The vortex of it pulls you in toward her lips and her throat, and thus does the most sophisticated abstract form express and stoke human desire.
La Donna will reside in the Milwaukee Art Museum until June 6. Details here.
Art
-
Exhibit Tells Story of Vietnam War Resistors in the Military
Mar 29th, 2024 by Bill Christofferson
-
See Art Museum’s New Exhibit, ‘Portrait of the Collector’
Sep 28th, 2023 by Sophie Bolich
-
100 Years Of Memorable Photography
Sep 18th, 2023 by Rose Balistreri
I went with Tom to the press preview, and this is really an impressive exhibition. Laurie Winters curated and talked about thinking of this as a “slow art movement” related to the slow food movement. The installation design adds to this. You walk into a room painted a vivid blue-violet (taken from a different Rafael painting that an image and part of the info wall). The text is white and there are several images to give context to the “La Donna.” Then you enter into a darkened room, same wall color, with the painting centered and lit on the far wall. The frame is ornate (and from a century later, but the frame that is part of the Pitti Palace installation in Florence). There are benches there to sit and look. With nothing else in the room, you look longer and more carefully. It is not that this is the one and only painting worthy of this effort (though it is worthy), but it creates a completely different museum experience that is rewarding and teaches us the patience of spending focused time seeing and thinking. In the side room, there is a short video with more information.