Raphael: A Portrait Sheds Essential Light on One of History’s Greatest Artists

By Chris Knight

Rating: A-

Meticulously researched, overstuffed (even overflowing) with information, Raphael: A Portrait is a heady rampage through the life and artistic history of one of the great artists of history.

The School of Athens

Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael represented the pinnacle of early 16th century Italian art. But unlike those other greats, who lived to 88 and 67 respectively, Raphael crammed all of his work into just 37 years. They may all be immortalized in the Teenage Mutant Ninja franchise, but Raphael was no turtle.

Raphael’s director and narrator Howard Burton is also something of a polymath, with an MA in philosophy and a PhD in theoretical physics. He was founding director of Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the founder of the Ideas Roadshow.

The Ideas Roadshow is a collection of films, essays, podcasts, and more, and includes “Through the Mirror of Chess,” a delightful history of the game that includes a hilarious takedown of “Hollywood Chess,” the version played in the movies where the board is set up the wrong way, and every game ends in a “checkmate!” that no one saw coming.

Raphael, its latest production, is not for the faint of heart, as it demands at least a passing knowledge of ancient Greek gods and thinkers, and opens with almost 20 minutes of “context,” a whirlwind introduction of pontiffs, politicians, and other leading figures of High Renaissance Italy.

But there’s much to enjoy for even the dilettante, a label I’ll gladly apply to myself. Raphael’s decoration of the ceilings of the new Papal residence at the Vatican — with Michelangelo working on the Sistine Chapel next door — are a thing of splendour, and the film nimbly walks us through many of its details, including a map of the night sky as it appeared over Rome on the night of the Papal Coronation of the artist’s patron, Pope Julius II.

There’s also a wonderful walk-through of Raphael’s fresco The School of Athens, pointing out key figures from antiquity but also those based on contemporary people. Burton lets us know when fact slides into speculation, but he isn’t shy about the latter, and the film is better for it.

The film also touches on Raphael’s work as an architect — he was one of many to take a crack at St. Peter’s Basilica during its 160-year creation — and as an archeologist, who tried to create an exhaustive list of Rome’s ancient monuments.

We learn of his workshop and pupils, one of whom, Giovanni da Udine, was so skilled at painting botanical subjects (including recent imports from the New World) that biologists study his work today.

A final chapter notes the long shadow of his influence, including the anti-Raphael movement who called themselves the pre-Raphaelites (in spite of coming along more than three centuries later) and such famous fans as Renoir, Dalí, Picasso, Turner, Prince Albert (husband of Queen Victoria) and Catherine the Great, who so admired his Vatican loggias that she commissioned a copy to be constructed in Saint Petersburg. High praise indeed.

Raphael: A Portrait. Directed by Howard Burton. Starring Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino. Available May 24 on Amazon Prime and through ideasroadshow.com.