It was worth the wait: the pandemic forced the National Gallery to postpone the major exhibition dedicated to Raphael for two years, which should have coincided with the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death in 2020.
The forced delay only accentuated the importance of the moment and the joy of the opening of the first exhibition outside Italy which reveals Sanzio in all its multifaceted and multidimensional completeness as an artist.
Skilled draftsman and sublime painter, but also talented architect, inventive designer, archaeologist, collector and conservator, entrepreneur and teacher, creative and innovative designer of mosaics, sculptures, prints, tapestries and decorative arts.
The National Gallery has managed to obtain loans of admirable works from the major museums in the world, including the Uffizi and the Vatican, which, added to the nine paintings in the permanent collection, allow a very rich in-depth journey into Raphael’s short but intense artistic life.
Almost one hundred works
Almost one hundred works, paintings and drawings but also models and drawings of the buildings he designed, prints and cartoons, large bronze tapestries and rounds designed by him, exhibited for the first time outside Italy. Raphael was adept at working both in miniature and on a large scale and the location of the exhibition in the splendid rooms on the “noble floor” of the National Gallery, not in the new part usually reserved for temporary exhibitions, does justice to the works. The exhibition is a rare opportunity to see numerous examples of the Virgin and Child, both from Raphael’s Florentine period and from the early Roman years, paintings from Munich and Washington, from Berlin and Perugia, from Edinburgh and Lille, from Naples and Madrid.
Raphael, who never had children and who was orphaned of a mother as a child, created with his Madonnas with the child Jesus some of the most tender and realistic but at the same time sublime images of maternal love. In his paintings he managed to blend the expressive dynamism of Michelangelo’s figures with the intense contemplative inner life of Leonardo’s figures, adding a completely new and unique grace, harmony and naturalness.