• The Paper Sphere. What do people look for in Rafael?

Italy celebrates 500 years of Rafael's death with a major retrospective in Rome. A journey through the life and work of one of the great artists of the Renaissance, from the beginnings in his native Urbino to his final consecration during the pontificate of León X.

The exhibition brings together more than 200 masterpieces by Rafael Sanzio (1483-1520) from fifty institutions around the world, including the Prado Museum, the Louvre, the National Gallery in London or the Vatican Museums. Paintings such as the Veiled Lady or The Evening , one of the most famous portraits of the painter; Saint John the Baptist as a child ; the Virgin of the House of Alba or the portrait of Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de Medici and Luigi De Rossi , a loan from the recently restored Uffizi Gallery, which has opened a crisis within the institution.

Last week the gallery's scientific committee presented its block resignation in protest of the transfer of the fabric, considered too delicate to be able to leave the Florentine museum, where a good part of the exhibition's works come from. A decision that, however, claimed the director of the Uffizi, the German Eike Schmid. " The great exhibition about Rafael, a historical cultural event , will be one of the great reasons of pride for Italy in the whole world this year, hence I cannot do without the portrait of Leo X, a masterpiece that, by the way, enjoys of a very good health and is in optimal conditions to travel to Rome, after being restored ".

Conceived as the greatest retrospective ever made around the figure of Raphael, the exhibition is especially inspired by the Roman period that consecrated the painter and architect as an artist at the height of Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo , the other two great Renaissance geniuses , with whom he came into contact during his time in Florence. Both had a great influence on the artist, like Pietro di Cristoforo Vanucci, called the Perugino, considered the master of the genius of Urbino, who died almost in oblivion overcome by his student. The beautiful ' Rafael, as they called him at the time, was a child prodigy who enjoyed great respect from an early age. After his premature death at 37, he was fired with a funeral in the Vatican and buried in the Pantheon in Rome.

The exhibition represents the most emblematic event of the program approved by the National Committee instituted by the Italian Ministry of Culture for the 500th anniversary of the artist's death. Despite the crisis due to the spread of the coronavirus in the north of the country, more than 70,000 tickets have already been sold, according to the organizers. Rafael, 1483-1520 can be visited from today until June 2 in the Escuderías del Quirinal.

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