Marking the 500th anniversary of Raphael's death in 2020 and delayed due to Covid restrictions, the National Gallery presents one of the first ever exhibitions, entitled Credit Suisse Exhibition: Raphael, exploring the full career of this giant of the Italian Renaissance. A painter, draftsman, architect, designer and archaeologist who has captured in his art the human and the divine, love, friendship, culture and power, and who has given us quintessential images of beauty and civilization: Raphael's life was short, his work prolific, and his legacy immortal. In his short career, which lasted just two decades, Raphael Santi (1483–1520) shaped the course of Western culture like few artists before or since. This exhibition examines not only his famous paintings and drawings, but also his not very well known work in architecture, archeology and poetry as well as his designs for sculpture, tapestry, printmaking and applied arts. The goal is to do something no previous Raphael exhibition has ever done: explore every aspect of his multimedia activity.
Broadly chronological, the exhibition opens with a section dedicated to the artist's early works created in the Marche region and in his hometown of Urbino. These include the designs for his “Altarpiece of St Nicholas of Tolentino (Studies for the Coronation of St Nicholas of Tolentino”, c.1500-1, black chalk, Palais des Beaux‐Arts de Lille) which reflect his lifelong practice of studying from live models. The exhibition then focuses on Florence where, in addition to establishing himself within a new network of clients, Raphael continues to produce works for many other locations, including the Ansidei Madonna (Madonna with Child and Saint John the Baptist and Saint Nicholas of Bari, 1505, oil on poplar, National Gallery) for Perugia. A rare collection of Raphael's paintings of the Virgin and Child – the genre he especially made his own – includes paintings dating from his time in Florence, as well as paintings executed during his early years in Rome, where he moved in 1508 to work for one of the great patrons of Western art history, Pope Julius II (reigned 1503-1513).
This is followed by a section on Raphael's arrival in Rome where he quickly obtained the patronage of the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi (1466–1520). Chigi became his most important lay patron, commissioning frescoes for his suburban villa, now called the Farnesina, as well as designs for chapels in two Roman churches: Santa Maria della Pace and Santa Maria del Popolo. The exhibition includes two bronze tondos from Santa Maria della Pace, never previously exhibited outside Italy (attributed to Cesarino Rossetti based on drawings by Raphael "The Incredulity of St. Thomas"; and "The Descent into Limbo", both from 1511 –12 circa, bronze, Italian state property, Milan, Chiaravalle, Abbey Church of Santa Maria.) A room is then dedicated to Raphael's frescoes for Julius II's private apartments, or Stanze. This four-room project included monumental multi-figure compositions depicting biblical subjects, scenes from Church history, allegories of concepts such as Poetry, and the great gathering of philosophers known as the "School of Athens" (1509–10). Drawings in the exhibition include a life study for the Greek philosopher Diogenes (c. 412–323 BC) depicted in the “School of Athens (Study for Diogenes”, c. 1508–10), silverpoint on paper with beige primer, pink and light purple, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.) In addition to his demanding commitment to the Stanze, Raphael found time for other commissions, including his insightful portrait of the sickly and elderly, but strong-willed Julius II, also exhibited in this room (1511 , oil on poplar, National Gallery, London) which transformed the way the powerful were depicted in Western art. Raphael's Roman years saw him apply his talents extensively and build a leading and multifaceted artistic enterprise. The artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) described him as a "universal artist" in recognition of the mastery he has developed across many media. The section explores his innovative work in media such as printmaking, decorative art and tapestry design, as well as his architectural and archaeological work as a surveyor of ancient Rome. However, painting remains central to his work, as demonstrated by the pictorial variations on the subject of the Holy Family displayed in the exhibition.
Many of his original print drawings, engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi (c. 1470/82 – c. 1534), are displayed here together with his preliminary drawings which reveal the immense problem that Raphael dealt with what others might have considered minor works. This includes his “Study for the Massacre of the Innocents” (c. 1509–10, red chalk, The Albertina Museum, Vienna.) Also included in this section is a single autograph design for the edge of a tray (“Design for the Border of a Salver', c.1510, pen and brown ink, red chalk, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.) As Pope Leo X's surveyor of ancient Rome (reigned 1513-1521) Raphael undertook an ambitious survey of the city ancient with drawings of its main buildings, lamenting in a letter displayed in the exhibition the destruction of significant ruins as a shame of our age', Letter to Leo X, (Raphael, in collaboration with Baldassarre Castiglione (1478–1529), 1519, loaned from the State Archives of Mantua, Acquisto Castiglioni.) The exhibition also offers an overview of his work as an architect in Rome, including his most prestigious assignment as architect of the new St. Peter's, the beginnings of the basilica we know today. His designs for private terraced houses, or palazzos, are represented by a model of the facade of the Palazzo Branconio in Aquila, while his designs for the sprawling Villa Madama, created as a Medici retreat just outside Rome, were the most ambitious of their kind since antiquity, but unfortunately the villa was only partially completed (“Elevation Drawing of a Villa Project”, c. 1516, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.)
Raphael's pioneering work as a tapestry designer is represented by St. Paul Preaching in Athens (Workshop of, or for, Pieter van Aelst, active c. 1490–1533, after a design by Raphael, c. 1517–19, Brussels wool, silk, and gilt-metal wrapped thread, Vatican Museums, Vatican City.) This was part of his Acts of the Apostles series, designed to hang in the Sistine Chapel below, and in direct competition with Michelangelo's famous ceiling fresco. This series is among his most complex and influential works, bringing the rationale of his monumental and meticulously planned narratives of Vatican frescoes to a different and transportable medium. A digital facsimile of the original painted cardboard for the tapestry (Royal Collection, on permanent loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum), made especially for this exhibition, helps clarify the collaborative creative process behind these large projects, which also involve assistant painters and draftsmen, of course, such as the weavers in the Netherlands who created the finished works. The spectacular final room is dedicated to the portraiture of Raphael's last years. He was generally too busy to take on portrait commissions, unless there was a strong political imperative, as with the "Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici" (1518, oil on canvas, private collection). The portraits he executed, therefore, tend to have been painted out of friendship or affection, supremely exemplified in his famous 'Portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione' (1519, oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris).
“The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Raphael” is curated by David Ekserdjian, Professor of History of Art and Cinema at the University of Leicester; Tom Henry, Professor of Art History (Emeritus) at the University of Kent; and, for the National Gallery, Dr Matthias Wivel, Aud Jebsen's curator for sixteenth-century Italian painting.
