Chapter 1 of 6
A Friend, Up Close
You're looking at one man, close enough to share a thought. Raphael painted his friend Baldassare Castiglione around 1514, in Rome, when both of them stood at the center of papal culture. Castiglione was a diplomat and writer, soon to publish 'The Book of the Courtier,' the age's manual for cultivated grace.
Notice the restraint: greys, blacks, soft white, almost no colour at all. There's no marble column, no landscape, no emblem of rank. Just a person, turned slightly toward you, calm and entirely present.
Raphael trusts that a quiet face can hold everything.
