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Liberation of St Peter (Raphael)The Liberation of St Peter shows the prince of the apostles and first Pope, miraculously savedfrom prison by an angel while the guards lie sleeping (Acts of the Apostles 12:5-12). The sceneis a reference to Julius II (pontiff from 1503 to 1513), who before being elected Pope was thetitular cardinal of St Peter in Chains. In the celebration of light Raphael confronts the divinelight of the angel with that of the dawn, of the moon, of the torches and of their reflections onthe armour and even of the natural light that enters from the window below, creating the mostextraordinary effects.PinacotecaThe Transfiguration (Raffaello Sanzio)Cardinal Giulio de' Medici (the future pope Clement VII) commissioned two paintings for thecathedral of S. Giusto of Narbonne, the city of which he had become bishop in 1515. TheTransfiguration was entrusted to Raphael, and the Raising of Lazarus (now in the NationalGallery of London) to Sebastiano del Piombo. The Transfiguration was not sent to Francebecause after Raphael's death (1520), the cardinal kept it for himself, subsequently donating itto the church of S. Pietro in Montorio where it was placed over the high altar. In 1797, following
the Treaty of Tolentino, this work, like many others, was taken to Paris and returned in 1816,after the fall of Napoleon. It was then that it became part of the Pinacoteca of Pius VII (pontifffrom 1800 to 1823).The altarpiece illustrates two episodes narrated in succession in the Gospel according toMatthew: the Transfiguration above, with Christ in glory between the prophets Moses andElijah, and below, in the foreground, the meeting of the Apostles with the obsessed youth whowill be miraculously cured by Christ on his return from Mount Tabor.This is Raphael's last painting and appears as the spiritual testament of the artist. The work isconsidered in his biography, written by the famous artist and biographer of the 16th century,Giorgio Vasari, "the most famous, the most beautiful and most divine".Deposition from the Cross (Caravaggio)The Deposition, considered one of Caravaggio's greatest masterpieces, was commissionedby Girolamo Vittrice for his family chapel in S. Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova) in Rome. In1797 it was included in the group of works transferred to Paris in execution of the Treaty ofTolentino. After its return in 1817 it became part of Pius VII's Pinacoteca.Caravaggio did not really portray the Burial or the Deposition in the traditional way,inasmuch as Christ is not shown at the moment when he is laid in the tomb, but ratherwhen, in the presence of the holy women, he is laid by Nicodemus and John on theAnointing Stone, that is the stone with which the sepulchre will be closed. Around the bodyof Christ are the Virgin, Mary Magdalene, John, Nicodemus and Mary of Cleophas, whoraises her arms and eyes to heaven in a gesture of high dramatic tension.Caravaggio, who arrived in Rome towards 1592-93, was the protagonist of a real artisticrevolution as regards the way of treating subjects and the use of colour and light, and wascertainly the most important personage of the "realist" trend of seventeenth century painting.
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