Make Way for the Great Raphael!

On 1 March 1754, a year after the contract was signed, Raphael's Sistine Madonna reached the royal palace in Dresden. Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, had bought it from the monks of San Sisto in Piacenza, and a story soon attached itself to the day. The best light in the room fell where his throne stood, the servants hesitated, and the king shoved the throne aside himself, crying "Make way for the great Raphael!" Nothing in the records confirms it. Menzel's picture is how most people know it.

He stages it as a household moment, in quick strokes of gouache and pastel. On the left the queen stands with her back to us in a pale wrap. In the middle a servant bends low under the big dark canvas as it is carried in. On the right the king, in a red cap and a fur-lined robe, pushes a gilded armchair out of the way. Menzel described him as the "domestic Augustus" in his momentary role as a furniture mover for the sake of something higher. That is the second version of the scene: he began it in 1855, and in 1859 glued extra paper onto the left side and along the bottom, trimmed the right and painted over parts of it.