This painting, La Fornarina, by Raphael which hangs in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica Palazzo Barberini. When I first saw this painting, I was tricked by thinking it was done by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, a Baroque artist, because this painting is beautifully sketched out before paint was put on the canvas. We, the viewers, can tell that this artist sketched the outlines of the person before taking a brush with paints and painted it because the outlines of this woman is very defined, clear, and the woman is clearly not blended with the background. Normally, painters who seriously think about sketching the piece before putting paints of colors on the canvas don’t think about colors as much as the painters who don’t sketch at all. Painters who don’t sketch at all like the well-known artist, Paul Ruben, tend to focus on the colors thoroughly. In other words, they experiment with colors often by mixing. However, this Raphael painting is an exception. Both, the sketch and the colors are well focused. The woman, who is actually probably a mistress of Raphael according to the scholars, glows brightly because of the magnificent colors and the light is well rendered which creates three-dimensional. The rendering of a three-dimensional look with the light is called chiaroscuro. Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres is just simply a painter who was inspired by Raphael as these two artists share the same ideas. Speaking of the differences between painters who sketch an outline before painting and painters who just starting painting without having an outline is a controversial idea that has lasted for years since the Baroque period. Some art professors will say that artists must sketch an outline before painting to make the picture look the best, and some others may say that artists should just simply paint without plan. I know that many art students go crazy throughout their schooling career, figuring out who is right. We just have to realize that there is no correct answer like a literature that leaves us with a cliffhanger. We, as the artists, just have to justify our opinions and go with our heart and whichever the side we choose is correct.
This museum is flourished with beautiful Renaissance and Baroque paintings, including Caravaggio and Hans Holbein the Younger.