The outstanding painter of the Renaissance period, Raphael  died at the age of 37, and one of his last paintings was this very one, dedicated to an unnamed Roman beauty, shown on the canvas in all her physical attraction. Looking at us is a young, slightly smiling woman, but her eyes are turned sideways, as if she was ashamed of how she is being portrayed. With one hand she is holding the tulle covering her delicate breasts, the other is kept on her womb, as if guarding a secret. The transparent material, instead of covering, even more so accentuates the eroticism beaming from the model, while this sort of veiling creates space for the imagination. In the background of the painting we will see bushes – branches of myrtle and quince. Both these plants, as was typical for art at that time, bear a lot of symbolic significance. Myrtle was identified with the goddess of love – Venus, while quince with bodily delight. Who and when changed the background of the painting, remains unknown, however x-ray images unanimously show that, initially it contained a landscape, reminiscent of those known from the works of Leonardo da Vinci.

Raphael’s biographer Giorgio Vasari claims that the artist had a rich love life and adored women, but it seems there was something special about this one called the Baker (Fornarina), since he had decided to paint her. Some art historians see in her, Margherita Luti, the daughter of a baker (It. fornario), Francesco from the Trastevere, whose home at Porta Settimiana, today houses a restaurant boasting of the fact, that in the past it was the house of Raphael’s lover.

The portrayed model received not only a nickname, but a complete back story. Some even saw the cause of Raphael’s death in her, as he was exhausted with an overflow of erotic pleasures. Because of this she became known as a harlot, although others saw in her the last great love of the artist. However, as if often the case with legends, the one which pertains to the relationship between Raphael and the baker’s daughter, and to which volumes have been devoted, may simply be a figment of the human imagination, desiring to see something that simply was not there. The identity of the portrayed girl is highly controversial, just as is the author of the painting. At the moment of Raphael’s death it was unfinished. Who the, was the person responsible for completing it? Discussions on the subject have been going on since the end of the XVIII century. Did Raphael’s student, Giulio Romano only put on the finishing touches, was he the author of the background, or did he significantly contribute to the portrait itself? Perhaps there were several authors? Presently the favored hypothesis is that, the painting was completed in two stages and was painted by at least two artists. The da Vinci landscape was the work of Raphael’s student, but what of the woman’s body which seems to be stylistically different than her head? Here researchers are not like-minded, as is the case with the identity of the woman. The term “Fornarina” itself was developed a lot later than the painting and may of course refer to a specific female baker, but also to something much more fascinating, which occupied the minds of the then writers and artists, and which is best displayed by a painting that is also found in Rome, by Titian, entitled Sacred and Profane Love (Galleria Borghese). The nude Venus in it, is a symbol of sacred love, the dressed Venus – is profane love. In a Renaissance take of poets of that time (Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Bembo), heavenly love was a show of true divine, selfless beauty, while earthly love was associated with the generative force of nature, which basically meant the act of procreation. It must be added that, a baker’s oven, as well as putting dough into it, since ancient times has been a symbol of sexual and procreative activities, as well as of the female reproductive organ, while the word fornus/furnus (Lat. furnace), brought on direct associations with the word fornicare, used to describe maintaining informal sexual relationships. In this light Fornarina would then be a personification of earthly, physical love.

However, why destroy a legend which is connected with the painting, about the last love of Raphael to a woman, who clearly displays her feeling on an armband with the name of her lover: RAPHAEL URBINAS. And does the story, that Fornarina was not allowed to take part in Raphael’s funeral, celebrated by Pope Leo X, and as some claim, a few months later – filled with grief after the loss of her lover – crossed the threshold of the Santa Apollonia Monastery, where all traces of her vanished, not fulfill our expectations?

La Fornarina, Raphael, Raffaello Santi, approx. 1520, oil on wood, 87 cm x 63 cm, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini