Raphael, Whatever it's called....

Raphael
The Justice Wall
1510-1511

...also called "Lunette of the Virtues", the "Cardinal Virtues" and "Jurisprudence"

• Represents 'good'
• Built around an allegorical theme
• Pictures the four traditional sisters: Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance and Justice
• Fortitude is a robust woman clad in armor under a mantle.
• Her head is covered by a helmet and is crowned in oak leaves (which is the symbol of Pope Sixtus IV and his nephew Pope Julius II)
• With her right hand she restrains a lion and she holds an oak branch, which once again makes reference to the Pope
• Prudence is a young woman gazing at herself in a mirror
• This is symbolic of the Socratic nosce te ipsum or 'know thyself'
• She has a head with 2 faces
• The front seems to be that of a maiden
• The back is that of an old man, which is white-haired and bearded
• This is to denote the experience of age with its usefulness in foreseeing the future and in keeping trouble at a distance
• He has  concealed most of the head under the woman's scarf, so that very few people are actually aware of it.
• Temperance is the youngest and the most attractive of the sisters
• She smiles with a turban knotted under her chin
• She is holding a pair of reins
• Justice is considered the most important of the virtues at the time and therefore is placed hierarchically higher.
• It is actually seen as the sum and guide of all other virtues
• Seen above, holding a sword and looking down over the others
• There is a inscription which reads ius suumcuique tribuit or 'to each his due'

•  The three theological virtues are found in the small angels
• Faith points to heaven
• Hope holds the lit torch
• Charity is pulling the fruit from the tree branch

• In the space beside the scene, there are two historical scenes
• The giving of the civil law (Not perceived to be of Raphael, except the drawing of the emperor)
• The emperor Justinian receives the civil law
• The characteristics of the painting are that of the craftsman, not the artist
• This has been determined to be Guillaume de Marcillat, a Frenchman who had a few other works in the Vatican, which have been lost
• It is unfinished, as there are a lack of shadows on the ground and the stool is barely sketched in
• The giving of the Cardinal law
• Julius II poses and receives the canon law from St. Raymond of Peñafort 
• These laws were kept as part of the church law until the Code of the Canon Law was formed in 1917
• Julius is placed in the wider space, because the window of the wall is not in the center
• He is seated on the throne and crowned with a tiara and in a large cape
• It includes accurate portrayals of the papal court
• Cardinals Giovanni de' Medici and Alessandro Farnese (future Popes Leo X and Paul III) and also Antonio del Monte.
• Two or three of the portraits are unidentifiable 
• The various heads of the spectators are not in proportion with another
• It is almost as if they were forced to be inserted, not from aesthetic necessity, but rather by requirement from higher positioning

-Ry