Raphael And Madonna Of The Goldfinch

During the Florentine period, there were numerous of paintings of Madonnas that portrayed Virgin Mary, Christ and young John the Baptist but out of all the works, Raphael stood out for his incredibly beautiful and sweet Madonnas. Raphael is one of the most well known painters in the High Renaissance. Madonna of the Meadow was painted in 1505 and a year later Madonna of the Goldfinch was painted. Both paintings are religious and humanistic in nature and share a sense of High Renaissance composed of balance, stability and eternal perfection. They are both oil on wood panel and have similar approximate dimensions of 40 in x 30 in. Usage of oil paint created luminous quality as the artist used a glazing technique to apply multiple layers of paint to achieve translucency, intensity and depth of color. Oil paint allowed for soft modulation of light and shadow. For instance, in Madonna of the Meadows light moves from Christ’s front leg that helps it project forward, to the shadows of the back of his leg that help it move back in space.
Madonna is on top, and Saint John and Christ is on either side. Although the Madonna of the Goldfinch depicts a tighter pyramidal composition than the slightly shifted triangle in Madonna of the Meadow, both paintings are unified by Madonna’s body composition of the pyramid. Looking at the painting as a whole, we sense monumentality as Madonna’s pyramidal shape fills up most of the space. However, because Raphael provides an proportionate space in which to place the figures, the painting does not feel cramped, but rather, there’s a sense of