Raphael's authorship in the 'Expulsion of Heliodorus.' - interpretation of court painter Raphael's mural

This article draws on material from my dissertation, "Raphael's Art of Representation: Political Narrative and the Grounds of Truth in the Stanza d'Eliodoro." My thanks again to Richard Brilliant and David Rosand for guiding that project as well as to David Freedberg, Charles Larmore, and James Mirollo for useful suggestions. With regard to the present essay, I am indebted to Nancy Troy for excellent editorial counsel, to an unnamed Art Bulletin referee for corrections of detail, and especially to John Shearman, who waived his anonymity as reader, entered into correspondence, and generously shared unpublished research.

1. M. Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter, New York, 1971, 81; idem, "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes," in Holzwege, Frankfurt, 1950, 67, translation modified.

2. The first position is that of Richard Wollheim; the second that of Norman Bryson. See R. Wollheim, "What the Spectator Sees," and N. Bryson, "Semiology and Visual Interpretation," in Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation, ed. N. Bryson, M. A. Holly, and K. Moxey, New York, 1991, 101-50 and 61-73.

3. N. Goodman, Languages of Art, 2d ed., Indianapolis, 1976, 21ff.

4. Such practices entail knowing how to encounter an image. So, for example, in attending to a medieval image understood as an "artistic creation,"one looks for formal nuances and niceties of paint application; in engaging the same image as "made without human hands," one seeks lustrous effects as signs of divinity. The general philosophical point here is Heideggerian - that understanding (Verstehen) is the know-how embodied in social practices. In this view, know-how is not reducible to a cognitive stock, web of beliefs, mentalistic interpretation, representation, categorical lens, or theory of art. See M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, New York, 1962. And for an important discussion, see H. L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's "Being and Time," Division I, Cambridge, Mass., 1991.

5. This involved a shift in practices of beholding from the appreciation of precious materials to the judging of painterly skill. See Baxandall, 1-27.

6. On the restructuring of the Vatican palace, see Shearman, 1971. See also C. L. Frommel, "Il Palazzo vaticano sotto Giulio II e Leone X: Strutture e funzioni," in Raffaello in Vaticano, ed. G. Muratore, Milan, 1984, 118-36.

7. On the dating of the cycle and the controversy about the precise sequence of the design and execution of the decoration, see S. Ferino-Pagden, "Raphael's Heliodorus Vault and Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling: An Old Controversy and a New Drawing," Burlington Magazine, CXXXII, March 1990, 201-3.

8. On the Stanza d'Eliodoro as audience chamber, see Shearman, 1971, 383; and idem, 1986, 76. For a partial critique of Shearman's views, see J. W. Jacoby, Den Papsten zu Diensten: Raffaels Herrscherzyklus in der Stanza dell'Incendio im Vatikanischen Palast, Hildesheim, 1987, 66-67.