The Raphael Copy ~ Part One

Making full or even reduced scale copies after the great frescoes of the Italian Renaissance has been a venerable practice in the training of painters for centuries. Contemporaries of Michelangelo and Raphael are reported to have been engaged in such activity just as soon as the plaster was dry and the scaffolding removed. The development of the academy of art in Europe was tied to the practice of sending student envoys to Rome with the purpose of bringing home replicas of the greatest artistic treasures from The Eternal City.

Though access to the Vatican is not what it used to be, unlocking lessons from these masterpieces through the process of copying, even from reproduction, offers an unmatched introduction to traditional mural decoration. The images above, document the start of our Mural Guild’s full scale copy in oil of a section from the ceiling fresco decoration by Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura. First, the abstract design was blocked out in charcoal and eventually refined into a fully modeled cartoon drawing, heightened with white chalk. Next critical outlines were fixed in red chalk and the excess charcoal vacuumed away to prepare for a ‘verdaccio’ or earth green underpainting. The use of this process, adopted from historical practice in egg tempera, fresco and oil painting, allows the artist to concentrate on drawing and modeling in a monumental manner before a full color effect is painted in subsequent scumbles and glazes – to be included in a future post on the progress of our Raphael copy.