EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini #2

For a late portrait Raphael was asked to paint a Neapolitan princess he had never seen, a problem he solved by sending Giulio Romano to Naples do a drawing from life. The painted portrait (left) was mostly done by studio assistants after a design by Raphael but the master himself painted the face. Its resemblance to a photograph of a now-lost painting, often thought to be a self-portrait (right), is so stunning that if it were not for the switch in genders the similarity might have been seen sooner. Why only artists can see this resemblance cannot be accidental because the links have meaning.

Matisse knew this when he based his 1937 Woman in Blue on Raphael’s princess, knowing full well that she resembled Raphael and represented the ruling feminine principle in his creative mind. Matisse thereby implies that the Woman in Blue, his own feminine principle, was descended from Raphael. I’ll do an entry on her soon.