from the sublime . . .

Vatican Museum:

< Fantastic, the babel of voices from all the guides of different tongue, whirring around in ambient quadrophonic soundscape and bouncing off the walls and arched ceiling of the square room with Raffael's frescoes -- as if illustrating the many thoughts of the philosopher personnages in his painting "The School of Athens" (Stanza della Segnatura) right in front of me.

Equally intriguing are Raffael's iridescent color combinations in lights and shadows of the vestments in this piece -- green-bluish highlights leading into brown shadows, light ochre into dull purple, pink into muddy green, vanilla into cobalt blue.

The doubtful figure of Heraclit in the foreground (a portrait of Michelangelo) was inserted after completion of the mural, as historians found the plaster was removed and reapplied (and hmm, the perspective of his desk seems skewed, and the floor pattern underneath more reddish?).

< Reportedly, as both artists worked here at the same time, Raffael took much inspiration from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, where I then spend an entire hour just examining all the coloring and formgiving: glow-in-the-dark teal highlights flow into gerbera-orange cloth folds, translucent lavender into turquoise...

I haven't seen this anywhere else until late 1800s art -- it precedes the Fauves, Hodler, Art Nouveau poster artists etc. (some openly conceding to Renaissance influences) -- and their 60s psychedelic epigons.

The full-ceiling poster I bought cannot do this wonderful colorplay all too much justice in mere CMYK...