When looking at Raphael's painting The Sistine Madonna, it is inevitable that the gaze be directed to the two little angels who seem to be leaning on the lower frame of the painting. Perhaps they are the most famous in the history of art. We've seen them on posters, t-shirts, mugs, magnets, bags, and even cross-stitch embroidered cushions. And it is that these putis could not be more angelic, as, in fact, is the vast majority of the work of Urbino, who painted this oil of considerable dimensions (265 cm x 196 cm) between 1513 and 1514.
Although, in reality, the most outstanding pictorially speaking of the painting is the image of the Virgin with her son in her arms that seems to descend from heaven to access the earthly world. Sweet and spiritual, she became a prototype for other artists. And there are those who want to see in his silhouette the outline of an R, the initial of Raphael who perhaps wanted to leave his mark on one of his last virgins represented before his premature death on April 6, 1520, the day who was 37 years old. By the way, a death that the artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari attributed to an excess of sex in his classic book Life of the best Italian architects, painters and sculptors (1550).
But let's go back to the painting, given such beauty and delicacy, who would notice the figure of Saint Sixtus, the seventh Pope of the Catholic Church who is located on the left side of the composition? And even more: who would stop to count the fingers of his left hand? Many of those who do, repeat the sum more than once. It seems that Rafael painted six fingers instead of five.
The prominence of the number six in this painting is also curious. From the very name of The Sistine Madonna, to that of the saint represented or to the number of characters portrayed in a pyramidal composition, in addition to the presumed six fingers of the sanctified pope's hand.
It is not the only case in Rafael's work. In another canvas, The Betrothal of the Virgin, one of the artist's most important works, six fingers also appear. In this case, on one foot. And the character that shows this anomaly is a barefoot Saint Joseph, the only one who appears without shoes in the scene... and in the same ceremony of his wedding with Mary!, something unheard of. It seems logical to think, as a consequence, that Rafael wanted us to realize this anomaly, which would hardly be an oversight difficult to understand for brushes as precise and precious as Rafael's.
Some experts have reached the conclusion that, in reality, this representation would not correspond to a pictorial realism with which Rafael intended to normalize polydactyly, that is, the genetic disorder that causes some human beings to be born with extra fingers; but rather it would be a symbolic message that would manifest a belief of the time according to which people with six fingers would be blessed with special gifts.
Specifically, they were considered to have a sixth sense that allowed them to divine the future, possess the gift of prophecy or interpret prophetic dreams. Six, that number that according to the Bible is the most perfect of the imperfect. And that for the Kabbalah means beauty, that which Raphael always sought, and found, in his celebrated paintings.
