The Transfiguration (detail) 1520

This detail shows the lower half of Raphael’s unfinished painting, The Transfiguration, made in Italy around 1520. Here we see a group of figures surrounding a convulsing boy. The painting has been interpreted as Raphael’s commentary on the ability of art to express divine beauty and its relationship to human suffering. The Transfiguration, commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de Medici, now Pope Clement VII, was an altarpiece. Raphael was thus working within a well-established institutional setting, yet he challenges his patron to see art as more than just decoration, but as a way of contemplating and engaging with social problems. The painting thus stands as a cultural document; it serves as a window onto the concerns and values of the time. To fully understand it, historians delve into letters, commissions, and contemporary theological debates. Doing so reveals the complicated, changing relationship between art, power, and society.