Defense of Raphael’s Transfiguration: Composition and Meaning

Raphael, Transfiguration (1516-1520)

Oil on panel, 405 x 278 cm.

The Vatican

Hegel offered an interesting defense of Raphael’s Transfiguration, which had been faulted for the stark division between the upper and lower halves of the canvas.  Hegel points out that this compositional feature effectively communicates the radical split between the human and the divine that nevertheless allows the healing power of Christ to cure the epileptic boy (Aesthetics, Vol. II, Part III, §3).  We see here a closeness to the art of painting, an understanding of composition, an ability to function as an art historian, that’s uncommon to many aestheticians today and which by itself lends credence to the more theoretical aspects of his philosophy of art. But also, that attention to detail is underscored by Hegel’s wider philosophical appreciation for the actual, the singular, the unique, the concrete which both balances the massiveness of his world-historical vision and insures a strong empirical grounding in the details of the painted scene and surface.  For it’s the nature of art history to range freely between minute attention to the singular details of artworks and the collective, parasensual entities like periods and styles by which it makes sense of those details.