If you’ve been reading recent posts, then you know that the richest man in the Renaissance, Agostino Chigi, hired Raphael (shown above, left) to paint the Loggia of Cupid & Psyche in his “love shack,” the Villa Farnesina. And you’ll also know that Raphael didn’t have much time for Chigi: while he did design the paintings in the loggia, they were largely executed by his students.
One of the reasons that Raphael had so little time available for Chigi’s project was that he was carefully balancing an official engagement to the niece of a Cardinal with his off-the-record passion for a common woman, Margherita Luti or La Fornarina, the daughter of a baker.
However, being the money mogul that he was, Agostino Chigi drove a hard bargain and therefore was infinitely creative in his efforts to convince Raphael to show up for work. Giorgio Vasari, a biographer of Renaissance artists, the first art historian, and an extraordinary spin-doctor, tells the story:
Raphael painted portraits of Beatrice of Ferrara and very many other courtesans, including his own mistress. He was indeed a very amorous man with a great fondness for women whom he was always anxious to serve. He was always indulging his sexual appetites; and in this matter his friends were probably more indulgent and tolerant than they should have been. When his close friend Agostino Chigi commissioned him to decorate the loggia in his palace, Raphael could not give his mind to the work because of his infatuation for his mistress. Agostino was almost in despair when with great difficulty he managed with the help of others to arrange for the woman to go and live with Raphael in the part of the house where he was working; and that was how the painting was finished.
Who did Raphael marry? Was it the official fiancé who would certainly offer him entrée into the upper echelons of Roman society or was it his beloved Fornarina, the baker’s daughter? Neither. Tragically, Raphael’s love story was cut short. He died at the age of 37 before marrying at all. In an effort to win divine forgiveness for his philandering, he is reported to have renounced his bond with his true love, La Fornarina, while on his deathbed. When his will was read, it served only to emphasize his official engagement to the Cardinal’s niece, for Raphael stipulated that one-tenth of his fortune should be used to decorate a chapel in the Pantheon in which he and the Cardinal’s niece would be buried.
Raphael’s orders were carried out — visitors still flock to Pantheon to pay homage at his grave. However, the story does not end so neatly. According to legend, a painting that was discovered in his studio when he died, is said to represent his mistress, La Fornarina (see above, right). The image is that of a seated woman, almost nude, who is ineffectively trying to cover herself with a transparent drape. Her bare breasts are brazenly displayed and around her upper arm she wears a band emblazoned with the name “Raphael of Urbino” – perhaps the artist’s way of laying claim to his lover and her sensual body.
But was Margarita Luti, La Fornarina, just Raphael’s lover? A recent restoration of La Fornarina revealed that the sitter in the portrait wears a band on her left ring finger (some suggest that it was painted out by Raphael’s students after his death) and that she originally sat in front of a landscape filled with plants like myrtle and quince, which were sacred to Venus and were considered to be symbols of love, fertility and fidelity. This evidence from the painting, along with the fact that four months after Raphael’s death, Margarita entered a convent in Rome – calling herself a widow – has led some to believe that La Fornarina and the superstar artist Raphael were secretly married – and that he intended to take that secret to his grave!
