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For That Knee Alone

There was an unspoken compeitition between Italian Renaissance giants Michelangelo and Raphael, and this is a story about how each artist paid homage to the other in a subtle way.

Author: Brenda Harness

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Most people think learning history is boring, something that’s required in school and then promptly forgotten, like algebra. But, those people never had a history teacher who knew the little stories. And it’s the little stories that make history interesting. For me, art history is not just looking at pretty pictures with pretty colors; it’s also a large body of knowledge about the culture and customs of real people. I was fortunate to learn from a number of gifted art historians, no, really storytellers, as teachers. This is one of those little stories.

Italian Renaissance giants Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raphael Sanzio had an unspoken competition. The irascible Michelangelo, forced by Pope Julius II into painting the ceiling of his own private chapel, the Sistine as we know it, complained that he was not a painter, but a sculptor. This complaint fell on deaf ears as the pope had a war to fight and neither time nor patience for soothing the artistic temperament. If the tale is true, the pope had even less patience for seeing that the artist was paid. Food being a necessity, this was a bone of contention between artist and patron. Raphael, on the other hand, blessed with a much more affable personality, never seemed to lack for funds, friends or food. Both artists were occupied with the pope’s private artistic visions in the Vatican simultaneously.

Raphael’s work in the Vatican Stanze was open to the curious; while Michelangelo left strict orders that no visitors were to be allowed in the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo, busy as a bee himself, consumed with a daunting task, apparently had little interest in Raphael’s work. But Raphael had an interest in his. He paid a secret visit aided by the pope to view Michelangelo’s ceiling in progress. So profoundly did it affect him that he returned to his work in the Stanza della Segnatura, the pope’s private library, where he proceeded to pay tribute to Michelangelo by incorporating a seated figure of Michelangelo in the foreground of his masterpiece fresco, The School of Athens.

That’s only the background for this little story. Perhaps not so well known then as his Madonna’s or his magnificent Vatican frescoes, Raphael Sanzio also executed a stunning fresco of The Prophet Isaiah in Sant’Agostino in Rome in 1511-12. The donor patron of Isaiah was the Head Chancellor of the Papal Court, Johannes Goritz of Luxemburg. Ruffled by what he considered to be an exorbitant price for the painting by Raphael, Goritz solicited Michelangelo for his opinion of its worth. Michelangelo looked at the painting of his chief rival with its powerfully rendered figure of the prophet. Rarely one to acknowledge the genius in others, Michelangelo simply replied, “For that knee alone, it is worth the price.”

About Author

Brenda Harness is an art historian and former university lecturer writing about a variety of topics pertaining to art and art history. She owns Fine Art Touch, a website devoted to the exploration of Italian Renaissance art. Sign up for our newsletter and free eBook, Talking about Art, coming soon.

Visit her at Fine Art Touch.

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