La Bella Giardiniera
by Raffaello Sanzio
Bella Giardiniera is an oil painting on the table (122×80 cm) of Raffaello Sanzio, signed and dated 1507 and kept in the Louvre Museum in Paris. It is immersed in a large lake landscape from a particularly high horizon, dotted with trees and signs of human presence, there is the Madonna sitting on a rock, with the support of Jesus Child’s legs. san Giovannino is kneeling to the right while directing an intense look to Jesus.
The composition, melted and pyramidal, with the protagonists linked by the concatenation of glances and gestures, is evident from Leonard models such as St. Anne, Virgin and Child with lamb. But it detaches it by replacing, with the sense of mystery and the alarming charge of allusions and suggestions, a fresh feeling of calm and spontaneous familiarity. Instead of the “motions of the soul”, Raffaello made a representation of affection, with the embrace of mother and son and the caresses of the latter on her knees, while the Baptist genuflette with respectful devotion. Leonardo also refers to the brown of the ground, dotted with carefully explored botanical species, and the atmospheric rendering of the background landscape, which is lost in the vapors of the distance. Instead, Michelangelo remembers some details such as Jesus’ leg on that of the mother, also present in the statue of Our Lady of Bruges.
The figures poses are carefully studied to “contrast”. Mary is turned to the left and makes her son naturally embrace, which stretches to take the book she has in her lap. Jesus shows an elegant classicism, recalling the sculpture of the time as Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges.
The stylistic complexity, evidenced by some preparatory drawings in which the composition was carefully defined, does not ever endanger the extreme friendliness and delight of the theme. To this purpose Brizio wrote: “[Raffaello is] at the same time the painter most appreciated by academics for his compositional science and beautiful harmony and the most popular, because the simple in his Madonna find the expression of their most natural feelings embellished and dear ones. “
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