S. Pasti - Abstract

This essay aims to demonstrate that Giles of Viterbo’s Historia Viginti Saeculorum, ad Jacopo Sannazaro’s De Partu Virginis, are the sources of Raphael’s Vision of Ezekiel, the first being a vast historical and prophetical treatise dedicated to pope Leo X, and the second a Latin poem on Christ’s and Mary’s lives. Particularly, the Historia Viginti Saeculorum presents the biblical vision of Ezekiel concerning the Four Beings (Lion, Ox, Angel and Eagle), as the prophecy of the pontificate of Leo X himself, identified with the Lion of the vision, that, being placed on the right side, is God’s beloved and favoured Being. While Giles provides Raphael the theological source for his painting, Sannazaro in his poem gives him a descriptive one, imagining the triumphant Christ flying across the heavens in his chariot drawn by the four winged Beings. Raphael’s painting was the model for a very large tapestry, meant to be the ceiling of a canopy over the pope’s ‘letto dei paramenti’, a bench where pontifical vestments were displayed before being worn by the pope himself for solemn celebrations. The ceremony of dressing was in itself a most solemn one, since, when wearing his sacred insignia, the pope showed himself as the true representative of Christ on earth, a role that was reserved for him since the Old Testament by God’s own and explicit will. It should therefore be clear that Raphael’s painting was made for the pope in Rome, and not for count Ercolani in Bologna, even though it is still to be explained when and how it finally reached Bologna where Vasari saw it.