The maxi-exhibition on Raphael for the 500th anniversary: 200 works at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome

It will be held from March 5 to June 2, 2020, the maxi-exhibition (as the organizers call it) that, at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, will celebrate Raphael Sanzio (Urbino, 1483 - Rome, 1520) on the 500th anniversary of his death. The exhibition, titled simply Raphael, will gather in the capital more than two hundred masterpieces including paintings, drawings and works of comparison, and is intended to be theflagship event of the program on Raphael approved by the National Committee specially established by Minister of Cultural Heritage Dario Franceschini and chaired by Antonio Paolucci.

Curated by Marzia Faietti and Matteo Lafranconi with contributions from Vincenzo Farinella and Francesco Paolo Di Teodoro, the exhibition benefits from a scientific committee chaired by Sylvia Ferino Pagden and composed of leading international specialists such as Nicholas Penny (former director National Gallery, London), Barbara Jatta (director Vatican Museums), Dominique Cordellier (Musée du Louvre), Achim Gnann (Albertina, Vienna), and Alessandro Nova (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence).

About 100 works by Raphael will be on display: never before has there been such a high concentration of works by the Urbino artist in one place. The Uffizi (which collaborated on the exhibition) is lending fifty works of which forty are by Raphael, and other loans are coming from the Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica in Rome, the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, the Fondazione Brescia Musei, the Vatican Museums, the Louvre, the National Gallery in London, the Museo del Prado in Madrid, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

The aim of the exhibition, which starts from the Urbino artist’s Roman period (the era in which the artist was definitively consecrated), is to recount Raphael’s entire creative journey, with some of his masterpieces: among them, the Madonna of the Grand Duke and the Veiled Madonna from the Uffizi, theEcstasy of St. Cecilia from the Pinacoteca in Bologna, the Madonna Alba from the National Gallery in Washington, the Portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione and theSelf-Portrait with Friend from the Louvre, and the Madonna of the Rose from the Prado.

“The exhibition on Raphael,” comments Cultural Heritage Minister Dario Franceschini, “is a great European exhibition that brings together masterpieces never brought together until now. The right way to celebrate the greatness and fame of a universal artist 500 years after his death. The prestigious exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale, which like the one dedicated to Leonardo at the Louvre sees the collaboration of the greatest Italian and international museums, will allow the public to admire a considerable body of Raphael’s works.”

For Mario Di Simoni, president of Scuderie del Quirinale, “the Raphael exhibition, realized in scientific and loan collaboration with the Uffizi, is a demonstration of how correct is the placement of the Scuderie del Quirinale in close connection with the great system of state museums. It is the ideal crowning achievement of the Scuderie del Quirinale’s 20 years of opening to the public.”

“The Uffizi Galleries, where the largest number of Raphael paintings and drawings in the world is concentrated,” says Eike D. Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Galleries, “are enthusiastically participating in the organization of this momentous occasion to offer a new, in-depth view of Raphael, especially for the period when the artist lived in Rome. The exhibition, the result of an unprecedented collaboration between the Uffizi Galleries and the Scuderie del Quirinale, takes place not by chance in the capital: Rome is not only a biographical stage of the artist, but the symbol of the national dimension of his art and thought.”

Image: Raphael, Madonna of the Grand Duke (c. 1506-1507; oil on panel, 84.4 x 55.9 cm; Florence, Palatine Gallery, Palazzo Pitti)

The maxi-exhibition on Raphael for the 500th anniversary: 200 works at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome

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