On Rai5 two documentaries on the Ducal Palace of Urbino and on Raphael


A new episode of Art Night will be aired tonight on Rai5. It will take a step back into the Renaissance with two documentaries on the Ducal Palace in Urbino and the court of Federico da Montefeltro and on Raphael.

Airing this evening, Friday, April 1, at 9:15 p.m. in prime time on Rai5 is a new episode of Art Night, the program hosted by Neri Marcorè from Silvia De Felice and Emanuela Avallone, Massimo Favia, and Alessandro Rossi, directed by Andrea Montemaggiori.

This week Art Night takes a leap into the Renaissance: in fact, the evening will begin with the documentary Il palazzo dei destini incrociati, dedicated to the Ducal Palace of Urbino. Described by Baldassarre Castiglione as the “palace-shaped city,” it was here that Federico da Montefeltro drew the greatest artists, architects, and intellectuals of the 15th century. The documentary that will take viewers through the history, atmosphere, and secrets of the Palace, in which art, mathematics, architecture, astronomy, and philosophy are intertwined. The history of the Ducal Palace, now home to the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, and the precious works housed here will be told. The main rooms, such as the Courtyard, the Apartment of the Jole or the Chapel of Pardon, and the less accessible and mysterious corners will be walked through, showing a building designed on precise philosophical, scientific, rational criteria in its complexity.

The evening will continue with Raphael. Myth and Modernity, a documentary dedicated to Raphael Sanzio, a great protagonist of Renaissance art. The video reconstructs, thanks to scholars and experts, the figure and career of theUrbino artist who was not only a painter and architect, but also an intellectual capable of interpreting the project of an entire society. Thanks to the reflections of writer and restorer Antonio Forcellino, the documentary will trace the golden age, the Roman years from the pontificate of Julius II to the death of Leo X in 1521. It will start by analyzing works of architecture with architectural historian Alessandro Viscogliosi in the Villa Madama and the Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, while architect Paolo Portoghesi will explain Raphael and the reference to classicism. From Raphael’s love of antiquity came the Letter to Leo X, written with his friend Baldassarre Castiglione, the first example of the history of the protection of artistic heritage: historian Francesco Paolo di Teodoro will discuss it at the Mercati di Traiano. And again, the relationship with patrons, the popes and his friend banker Agostino Chigi: the Villa Farnesina, a place of leisure and delight for the wealthy banker Agostino, shows a perfect symbiosis between architecture and landscape. Raphael worked first on the fresco of Galatea (illustrated by the Villa’s conservator, Virginia Lapenta) and then moved on to those of the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche, illustrated by botanical expert Giulia Caneva and chemist Antonio Sgamellotti.

Raphael also allows an excursus into the contemporary: the “workshop” of Vetrya, a company that deals with artificial intelligence and, on the model of a Renaissance workshop, promotes innovation and culture. Founders Katia Sagrafena and Luca Tommasini talk about it. To delve into the fortunes of Raphael from the 16th to the 19th century, we visit the Davoli Collection (illustrated by curators Zeno Davoli and Chiara Panizzi) in the Panizzi Library in Reggio Emilia, where engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi and others testify to the spread of Raphael’s models to the courts of Europe and beyond. To conclude, Raphael’s legacy to a contemporary artist, Luigi Ontani, author of a self-portrait in the guise of Raphael.

On Rai5 two documentaries on the Ducal Palace of Urbino and on Raphael
On Rai5 two documentaries on the Ducal Palace of Urbino and on Raphael


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