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About This Work
This drawing is a preparatory study for a figure in Raphael’s final painting, the Transfiguration. The face is rendered with deep shadows and highlights to create volume, capturing a moment of psychological intensity. A grid of squaring lines is visible across the paper, which the artist used to scale the drawing for the final large-scale composition.
As a study for the Transfiguration, this work relates to the Neoplatonic themes of divine light and the ascent of the soul popular in Renaissance Rome. The figure represents the human struggle to perceive the divine, a central theme in the works of Neoplatonists like Marsilio Ficino.
Connected Texts
Marsilio Ficino
The painting for which this is a study, the Transfiguration, visualizes the Neoplatonic concept of the soul's ascent toward divine light, as theorized in Ficino's Theologia Platonica.