Raphael arrives to Museo del Prado

The Museo del Prado opens tomorrow Late Raphael, one of the most important exhibitions ever to be devoted to the artist and his studio and the first to focus on his final years, during which time Raphael became the most influential painter in Western art. Co-organised with the Musée du Louvre, which will show the exhibition between October 2012 and January 2013, the exhibition includes a total of 74 works, the majority of them never previously exhibited in Spain.

It presents a chronological survey of Raphael’s artistic activities from the start of the pontificate of Leo X (1513) to the artist’s death in 1520, as well as analyze the activities of his principal assistants, Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni, up to 1524.

Late Raphael is the first major survey exhibition on Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio, 1483-1520) to combine paintings and drawings in order to focus on the last seven years of the life of the artist, who died in Rome on his 37th birthday. This was the period in his career when Raphael produced the work that would have the greatest subsequent impact on European art. Nonetheless, his paintings have not been fully understood due to chronological issues, to their disconcerting diversity and because the artist did not work by himself.

The present exhibition aims to establish a clear definition of the boundaries between works executed by Raphael and those produced with the collaboration of his principal assistants, Giulio Romano (ca.1499-1546) and Gianfrancesco Penni (ca.1496-1528). It starts in 1513 by which date Raphael had been working in Rome for five years, decorating the monumental Vatican Stanze alongside other leading Italian artists such as Michelangelo (his principal rival, at that point working on the Sistine Chapel) and Sebastiano del Piombo, firstly during the pontificate of Julius II then for Leo X.

The exhibition includes an unprecedented selection of forty-four paintings, twenty eight drawings, an archaeological item and a tapestry, loaned from around forty different institutions. Visitors can see a chronologically structured survey organised into six sections that cover Raphael’s pictorial and aesthetic evolution and also presents a comparison of his final style with a group of works by his two assistants Romano and Penni, the latter produced both during Raphael’s lifetime and immediately after his death.

You can buy prints by Raphael here

Dates: from June 12 to September 16.
Location: Museo del Prado. Paseo del Prado s/n. 28014. Madrid. Spain.
Opening hours: from Monday to Saturday from 10am to 8pm. Sundays from 10am to 7pm.

Enjoy more works by Raphael in the following slideshow: