A Raphael Exhibition Reunites Works with Their Historical Companions

The Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari described the altarpiece as Raphael’s first independent painting, which was commissioned for the Audi family chapel in the church of San Francesco al Prato in Perugia. The vibrant main panel depicts the Coronation of the Virgin and the figures appear to be having a conversation, unlike the more subdued style of Raphael’s teacher Perugino.

The altarpiece, now dismantled, consists of a large main panel and Predella from the Vatican Museums. The exhibition reunites the Pudela with several studies and caricatures of the painting, which are on loan from the Royal Collection Trust, Windsor; the British Museum; the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, France; and the Louvre.

Two studies in the Lille collection show that Raphael painted a perspective view of the head of the Apostle Thomas, posing in the center of the lower part of the painting, holding the Virgin’s garter. Thomas appeared delighted because observing the Assumption of the Virgin made him surrender to his faith, and according to Bambach there was an ethereal quality in the painting that did not quite translate to the painting. On the reverse of one of the sheets, Raphael developed a different idea for a robe worn by an apostle (possibly James, on the far right of the altarpiece).

The Colonna Altarpiece is one of four major altarpieces created by the artist in Perugia between 1504 and 1508, when he painted mainly for private patrons in Florence. Together, these altarpieces illustrate how Raphael developed the ability to create monumental group portraits, master control of oil paint, and create harmonious color combinations. The altarpiece was commissioned by the secluded Franciscan nuns of San Antonio di Padua in Perugia for their private worship space Nechiesa.

The altarpiece originally consisted of multiple parts in addition to the main panel – a pudra with several smaller panels, and a pair of saints on the left and right sides – but was disassembled and dispersed in the 1660s. The altarpiece’s main panel and lunette have been treasured highlights of the Met’s collection since 1916, when they were gifted to the museum by New York banker J. Pierpont Morgan (who acquired them in 1901, becoming the last Raphael altarpiece in private hands).

Predra’s three small panels show scenes from the life of Christ and will be reunited for the first time in this exhibition (joining the lunette in the Met’s collection, thanks to loans from the National Gallery, London, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston). Two flanking saints, Antony of Padua and Francis of Assisi, will also be on loan from Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Among other connections to be made, viewing the altarpiece as a whole will allow the visitor to appreciate how Raphael painted the panels and figures in the lunette with uniform proportions, which was not a common practice among early Umbrian artists.

During Raphael’s years in Florence, he explored arranging figures into a pyramid shape (perhaps inspired by the work of Leonardo da Vinci). Madonna on the meadow One such experiment, this exhibition reunites multiple studies that illustrate different ideas about gesture. A double-sided sketch in the Albertina Museum in Vienna shows Raphael trying to arrange the Virgin Mary with the Innocent Christ and the Infant Saint John.

For the first time ever, this exhibition brings together two important preparatory studies that could have been written on the same page. One, held by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, shows a rendering of Raphael’s main design using a sculpted model (possibly clay or wax) to paint the light effects on the figures. The other, owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a red chalk drawing that shows the group of figures mostly as they will appear in the final painting.

Raphael created the Round Madonna of Alba while living in Rome from 1509 to 1511, but to this day little is known about its patronage. It depicts the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, who is trying to seize the reed cross (possibly a symbol of the victory of the resurrection) from the infant Saint John the Baptist. The figures have a sculptural solidity and, despite being a trio, nestle comfortably within the round tondo format.

The exhibition will place the painting (on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.) alongside a double-faced study from the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille. This sheet shows how Raphael used his studio assistant as a stand-in for Madonna, trying out different poses and gradually finding one that suited the circular frame. On the front of the paper, St. John appears to be offering the Child a lightly articulated lamb (rather than the reed cross that appeared in the final version of the painting).

Raphael’s Virgin and Child with Raphael, Tobias and Saint JeromeBambach believes that the Madonna del Pesce, long nicknamed “Madonna del Pesce” (Madonna of the Fishes) because Tobias holds a fish in his right hand, is an understudied work that deserves more attention. The Virgin Mary and the Infant Christ appear to be interacting with the saints around them, even though they lived centuries apart. The altarpiece (on loan from the Prado Museum in Madrid), produced with the help of the artist’s studio in the Basilica del Domenico Maggiore in Naples, will be reunited with preliminary studies from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Model On loan from the National Gallery of Scotland.

In the sketches at the Uffizi Gallery we observe how Raphael used the poses he struck in his studio to paint with varying degrees of detail and play with some of his ideas. That’s why we see a young man wearing a square hat as Madonna’s stand-in. Instead of holding a Holy Child (apparently there were no babies available in the studio that day), it was this Garzone Catching hold of an amorphous shape that later became the infant Jesus. The Madonna’s throne is shown tilted and turned to the right, as opposed to the frontal view Raphael eventually used in this painting. “The expressive and confident manner of painting, as well as the numerous adjustments to the figures and the as-yet-undefined poses of the Virgin and Jerome on the right, indicate that this is a lively creative work in progress,” Bambach commented in the exhibition catalogue.

When Raphael created this work Model In a drawing that was close to its final painted version, he added a backdrop that cascaded in dramatic diagonal lines to add energy to the scene.

Soon after Raphael painted this altarpiece for the high altar of a new church in the church of Monte San Giovanni Bolognese, it became a must-see painting by other artists; it was even mentioned in early guides. At the request of one of Raphael’s few well-known female patrons, the Bolognese mystic and religious luminary Elena D’Oglioli d’Alio, the artist painted an image of an ecstatic and emotional Cecilia being lifted up to heaven.

From a design perspective, Raphael met the challenge of incorporating drama into a relatively simple composition. His thought process becomes clearer when we look at the painting (on loan from the National Gallery of Bologna) along with two known preliminary drawings. The first is a demonstration borrowed from the Petit Palais in Paris, which shows how largely disconnected the central characters are from each other. Raphael eventually changed this, adding more eye interaction. The second painting, collected by the Thales Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands, is a red chalk drawing depicting the figure of St. Paul on the left side of the composition, which is very different from the Petit Palais painting.