Transfiguration

Abstract

This chapter introduces two topics that will run throughout the book: the importance of the reproductive print in the period, and of Raphael’s Transfiguration. Reproductive prints were prized objects in the nineteenth century that inevitably shaped the reception of art works in the period. As more accurate, but far less labor-intensive, forms of reproduction took over their role, they have generally been lost to sight as objects and as topics for analysis. But recognition of their physical presence illuminates a number of topics that concern Material Inspirations: the relationship between matter and idea, the pressure of remains on culture, and the effect of forms of mediation on ideas about art. Raphael’s Transfiguration fascinated later periods formally and historically. It was known to be the painter’s last work, and understood to have been finished by his students after his death, and so it had important biographical associations even as it put into question ideas of individual creative agency. The divided form of the painting consistently called out for reconciliation by writers on the work, and was soon linked to the tension between the world and a state beyond it that the canvas represents. This chapter proposes ways in which unresolvable questions of representability raised by the theological program of the painting may be placed in relation to developments in taste in the nineteenth century, including reproduction itself.