LONDON – The news sent shock through Italy and the European continent: On April 6, 1520, Raphael – painter, draftsman, architect, archaeologist and all-round genius – died suddenly at the age of 37.
He had developed a fever about a week earlier, which 16th-century artist and author Giorgio Vasari attributed to too much activity in the bedroom in his The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Raphael “continued to excessively distract himself with the joys of love,” Vasari wrote. “After once indulging in more than his usual indulgences, he returned to his home with a severe fever”, and was “bled imprudently” by the doctors.
Five centuries after that untimely death, the National Gallery in London pays tribute to the great Renaissance artist in a blockbuster exhibition originally scheduled for 2020 (the anniversary year) and postponed due to the pandemic.
Ninety objects, 29 of which are paintings, are on display and illustrate the full range of Raphael’s talents, including his designs for sculptures, tapestries, prints and decorative arts. Among the drawings on display is a new discovery: a 1512-13 study for a small scene from the Holy Family that the curators decided was created by Raphael, not his studio.
“Raphael was the most famous artist in Rome and one of the most famous artists in Europe when he died, and he instantly became a legend,” said Matthias Wivel, one of the show’s three curators. “It is part of the DNA of the Western imagery tradition, the centerpiece of the canon.”
Plans for the anniversary were initiated by the National Gallery around 2015. Its director, Gabriele Finaldi, said Raphael was well represented in British collections: in the National Gallery itself (which owns 10 Raphael paintings), the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the National Galleries of Scotland. The show was set to open in Fall 2020, right on the heels of the world’s largest-ever Raphael exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale. That show opened in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic; closed after three days; and reopened in June with very limited visitor numbers (groups of six allowed every five minutes).
By this time, the National Gallery had postponed its own show and was facing its own virus problems. The museum had three closing periods, so visitor numbers were, according to Dr. Finaldi dropped “very dramatically”.
The “Credit Suisse Exhibition: Raphael” opened in April and ends on July 31.
“We’ve been through so much turmoil,” said Dr. finals. “Raphael is a welcome antidote, especially since his world is a world of harmony and peaceful forms.”
Raphael was born in the central Italian city of Urbino. His mother died when he was 8, and his father, a painter at the court of the Dukes of Urbino, died when Raphael was 11. The boy was raised by his uncle, a priest, and he drew and painted in the family studio from an early age. He was so gifted that he received his first known commission at the age of 17. From then on, Raphael was constantly on the move, to the cities where his patrons and commissions took him.
The National Gallery exhibit may not have all of Raphael’s masterpieces, but there are quite a few. It includes loans from the Louvre, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Prado Museum, the Uffizi Gallery and the Vatican Museums, according to the National Gallery’s website.
The exhibition is a broadly chronological and visual illustration of the life and times of the Renaissance master. It begins with some of his early altarpieces and depictions of the Madonna: immaculately rendered photographs with sky-blue backgrounds that enhance the sense of holiness and purity exuded by the subjects.
In real life, said Dr. Wivel, the curator, Raphael’s preoccupations were decidedly more earthy. He was “charismatic and constantly surrounded by people”, but also “very ambitious” and somewhat hubris. At the unusually young age of 23, he created a self-portrait that hangs in the show. It depicts him with long hair and a dark cap, which gives the viewer a sideways glance. Even more unusually, while still in his thirties, the artist spent a large sum of money securing a marble tomb in the Pantheon in Rome, where he is buried.
Raphael’s charm and networking skills enabled him to land one of the most important artistic commissions of all time: the frescoes in the Stanze della Segnatura, four rooms in the Papal Apartments, near the Sistine Chapel. While working on the property, Raphael became known for “taking ideas from Michelangelo and using them without his permission,” much to the elder master’s chagrin, said Dr. wivel.
He was also promiscuous, as evidenced by the stunning portraits of women in the last part of the exhibition – mainly “La Fornarina” (1519-20), on loan from Rome: a brunette with bare breasts, a striped turban and a bracelet on on which Raphael has marked his name in capital letters. She is “believed to have a personal effigy of a lover of his,” reads the wall text.
Raphael enjoyed superstar status more than three centuries after his death (the exact cause of which is unknown, despite Vasari’s bedroom theory).
Until the mid-19th century, Raphael was “regarded as Shakespeare in literature” and “recognized as the greatest painter of all time,” said Christian Kleinbub, author of a 2011 book on Raphael and a professor of Italian Renaissance art at the University of Ohio.
In the 19th century, a clique of British painters, poets and critics led by the critic John Ruskin rebelled against the idealization of Raphael as the epitome of a “highly classicist, very rational” style, said Dr. Kleinbub. The Pre-Raphaelites argued that his style was not an accurate representation, and their criticisms led Raphael to fall from art-historical grace.
Ironically for one so aware of posterity, Raphael’s legacy has also suffered posthumously because there is little direct documentation of his life: most of his writings have been lost, unlike, say, Leonardo da Vinci’s, whose writings helped cement his legacy as a Renaissance genius.
“I think the paintings have always charmed us anyway,” added Dr. Kleinbub added, noting that the pair of bored angels at the bottom of the Sistine Madonna is still a popular “campus poster choice.”
He said that in recent decades, scholars have begun to “look beyond the Raphael of porcelain figurines” and focus on less-researched aspects of his body of work, such as the portraits, “which are not so idealized, are more lifelike” and “individuality.” seem to have’, suggesting an inner world like Leonardo’s portraits do.
If you look at those portraits, which were “just as famous and sometimes more famous in his own time,” said Dr. Kleinbub, “you basically have everything.”
