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Description: | 195.0 x 195.0 AFTER RAPHAEL, Raffaello Santi; (Italian; 1483-1520) CRE ITALIAN SCHOOL; (1600-1750) LABEL "This is a full-scale copy, by an unknown artist, of one of Raphael's major panel pictures, finished in 1507 (Galleria Borghese, Rome). A fine painting, it was bought by the Foulis brothers for their Academy of Fine Arts, Glasgow's first art academy, so that students could learn from an important example of the master's work. This picture was rescued by the Friends of College in 1776 from the Foulis bankruptcy sale in London. It was finally sold to the University of Glasgow in 1779."
The work is an accomplished copy, by an unknown hand, of Raphael's dymanic response to Atalanta Baglioni's 1505 commission for an altar piece for San Francesco del Prato in Perugia. Robert Foulis, who inaugurated the Academy in 1754, made copious purchases of casts and 'Old Masters' - genuine or not - to support the teaching role of the school. Raphael seems to have been held in dutiful regard by the Academy, which possessed a few good copies of the master, and which issued sets of engravings after certain of his most celebrated works. Yet Raphael's position was equivocal within the fledgling Academies of Britain - he represented the epitome of 'high taste', yet could be lampooned mercilessly for that very rigidity : witness Joshua Reynolds' caricature of the 'School of Athens' of 1751, now in the National Gallery of Ireland.
It indeed transpired that the Foulis Raphaels had little role in the formation of subsequent trends in Scottish art. Genre, portraiture and landscape were too important to the Scots, as was the desirability of evolving a distinctive personal style. Nevertheless, the average Foulis student may have gained from the 'Entombment' an insight into the mechanics of high art, namely, the absorption of great example transmuted by highly developed personal taste. For has not Raphael himself, in this composition, adapted, in the most cunningly surreptitious way, both the Christ figure of Michelangelo's 'Pieta' of 1497-1500 and the Virgin of Michelangelo's Doni Tondo (1503-4) for the figure supporting the swooning Virgin on the right? The Scottish artist doubtless acknowledged this complexity, but resolved ultimately to resist its
convolutions.
After the dissolution of the Foulis Academy, this fine copy was rescued by the 'Friends of College', who purchased it at sale in London in 1776. It was finally sold to the University of Glasgow in 1779, and remains as memorial to Glasgow's precocious artistic life in the latter half of the 18th century.
Text Copyright : Marion Lawson, History of Art Department, University of Glasgow, 1984.
Our painting was among the works acquired by the Glasgow University Printer Robert Foulis to hang in the Academy of painting and used by students for copying. For another of the paintings formerly in the Foulis collection see 43521, the Martyrdom of St Catherine by Cossiers. In 1768 Robert Paul, a Foulis Academy pupil, engraved a Raphael drawing for the picture then owned by Crozat. Oil copies of the heads of Saint Mary Magdalen and of Nicidemus appear in p. 3 of A Catalogue of Pictures, Drawings, Prints, Statues and Busts in Plaster of Paris done at the Academy in Glasgow, c.1763 (Duncan p.113). Another same size copy, attributed to Cavaliere d'Arpino, is in the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia. | License: | http://www.hmag.gla.ac.uk/spirit/rights/ | Publisher: | Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow | Rights holder: | Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow | Subjects: | PASSION OF CHRIST : CHRIST : BIBLE : COPY : DEPOSITION : FOULIS ACADEMY : GLASGOW UNIVERSITY : FOULIS ACADEMY : MG1 2007 : | Source: | Hunterian Museum | Creator: | Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow | Identifier: | http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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