Raphael and Perugino in the Sistine Chapel

This study examines the guidelines formulated by Leon Battista Alberti in his work 'Della Pittura', published 1435, and focuses on Alberti’s definition of the esthetics of arts. The task of this study is to determine whether the infrastructure set by Alberti can be used to conduct a comparison between Perugino and Raphael, when focusing specifically on their creations for the Sistine chapel. Alberti’s methodology focuses on three elements – harmony, proportions, and variety. These elements are examined in two verticals. The first - within the bodies themselves in relation to all the organs comprising a single body, and with an emphasis given to head and face gestures and positioning. The second vertical is focusing on the relationship between different bodies when attributing importance to the viewer/spectator as a reference point.<br><br>By creating a hierarchy of attributes (for each artist, a collection of works, for each work, a collection of faces, for each face a collection of facial features and a collection containing the positional variables) this study shows the existence of a statistically significant difference between the two artists, according to which Raphael not just depicts his characters while using pitch and yaw twice as much as Perugino, but is also more diverse in the sizes of figures in the compared works. When taking these conclusions in light of the measuring system/mechanism that Alberti sets in 'Della Piturra', it may be argued that on an “Alberti’s scale” Raphael differs significantly from Perugino.<br>