Description
Raphael’s work Saint Michael is widely recognized by millions of people. The painting depicts the Archangel Michael with demons surrounding him. The angel has a pair of wings and a halo, and is surrounded by the dark, gloomy depths of hell.
In the Book of Revelation, the Archangel Michael, having defeated the rebellious angels, kills the dragon, an allegorical embodiment of evil, and casts it down to earth. In this work, Raphael enriched the traditional depiction of the scene with subsidiary scenes inspired by Dante’s Inferno, in which Dante recounts the punishment of hypocrites and thieves.
With the grace of a ballet dancer, the young Saint Michael swings his raised sword as he tramples the horrible beast. The figures in the work face one another in a desolate landscape, with the silhouette of a city in flames in the distance. The influence of Leonardo da Vinci, whose battling warriors in The Battle of Anghiari provided an extraordinary example of martial art (the painting deteriorated very quickly because of shortcomings in Leonardo’s experimental technique and is therefore no longer visible), is predominant in these works. But references to Flemish painting suggest the setting of Urbino, where northern influences were still quite vivid.
The works Saint Michael, Saint George and the Dragon , and Saint George in the National Gallery in Washington are linked both by their subject—a young armed man fighting a dragon—and by stylistic elements. All three are attributed to Raphael’s Florentine period and echo the influences he received from the great masters who worked in Florence or whose paintings could be seen there.
Raphael’s imagination, particularly evident in the details of Saint Michael, is more balanced in the figure of the Archangel, the center of the entire composition. This sense of balance and composure is developed further in the other two panels, where the landscape, still rooted in the Umbrian tradition, accentuates the serenity of the figures despite the dramatic nature of the subject. These small panels are indicative of a moment when the painter reaps the stylistic rewards of what he has absorbed so far while also raising pictorial questions that would be developed in the future.