EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Raphael's La Donna Velata is one of those great female portraits whose identity has long been the focus of research. Her name, though, will never be discovered because she is always a figment of the male artist's imagination, here a transformation of Raphael into the female symbolism of his mind, fertile and pregnant. That's why such "women" so often look pregnant too though Donna Velata is an exception. Nevertheless, the folds of her dress have an erotic connotation as strong as a Georgia O'Keefe lily.¹

Many have seen facial resemblance between her and other women in Raphael's works, including several Virgins and even his other, later "mistress", La Fornarina. Yet for two decades this hypothetical woman does not age which is why, having seen resemblance, some fail to mention it.²

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Yet no-one has ever noted that she looks like Raphael's self-portrait as a youth, as they all do. Compare his eyes and eyebrows and the shape of his nose to La Donna Velata's (top).

Their mouths are strikingly similar too, not only in the shape of their lips but in the rythym of the labial fissure, the line between them (center & below). Note how, to the right of centre, the wave in each pair has a slight uneveness and individualized shape. It is not a generic mouth but a specific one.

The belief that great portraits represent real people has been so widely believed that viewers then and now read into paintings age-old tropes taken on faith. EPPH's research on portraiture makes that abundantly clear. 

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The Donna Velata, like Leonardo's Mona Lisa ( top right) on which Raphael based her pose, sits like an artist painting a self-portrait. Ignore her fancy clothes, of course. Her torso faces her "easel" (just out-of-view to the left) while her head turns to check her features in an imaginary mirror, the very canvas we see. That is why all three portraits by Raphael at left adopt a similar pose with their "painting" hand near the edge in the lower left corner.⁴ The artist working on a self-portrait as seen in the mirror is commonly used as the underlying setting in art and portraiture.³ It symbolizes his search for self-knowledge because the implied viewer is not you but the artist. There is though a further implication which is even more important: you can think like the artist too, your minds at one.

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Raphael stamped the mysterious woman with his initial R disguised as a gold-tipped tie (left), just as he did in a ribbon with La Gravida and in her whole figure in the Sistine Madonna. He similarly inscribed his name on the armband of La Fornarina.⁵ 

Although I have demonstrated that La Donna Velata represents Raphael painting while looking inwards, that is not all to the picture by any means. The perfection of her head represents the artist's fully-realized Self, sitting as calm and composed as a saint. She is veiled because truth, like profound meaning, always is. Yet the image also suggests  that this painted head emerged out of the erotic confusion of the artist's brain represented in the twisting fabric below. That, though, an important subject, is a story for another time..... Stay tuned.