Book comes out with itineraries for discovering the Rome of Raphael painter and architect

Starting July 2, the volume Raffaello. Painter and Architect in Rome ( Officina Libraria editions), edited by Francesco Benelli (associate professor of history of architecture at the University of Bologna, specialist in Renaissance architecture) and Silvia Ginzburg (professor of history of modern art at the University of Roma Tre, with already several publications on Raphael to her credit): the book, published on the occasion of the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Raphael Sanzio (Urbino, 1483 - Rome, 1520), is intended as an agile and informed text for discovering paintings and architecture executed in Rome from his arrival in the Urbe in 1508 to his death in 1520.

A voyage of discovery of Raphael’s itineraries in Rome, complete with up-to-date explanatory sheets containing essential data, illustrating the wide range of Raphael’s mature production as a painter, from frescoes to altarpieces to portraits executed for Rome or preserved there today, and allowing the reader to identify and understand the traces of Raphael’s activity as an architect. Thus unfolds through the works the story of the artist’s exciting Roman season, engaged in the continual renewal of his own language as a painter in the overwhelming dialogue with Michelangelo, in the competition with Sebastiano del Piombo, in the mighty thrust of the solicitations provided by the ancient repertoire of sculpture, in the new commitment as a leader of the school, at the head of a workshop that would serve as a model for the entire century and beyond.

The book then makes it possible to follow the definition, precisely in Rome, of Raphael’s interests in the field of architecture and of the goals that the artist, in particular, matured on the front of modern architecture at the urging of Bramante and then of others, in the challenge constituted by the confrontation with the remains of ancient buildings, in a constant exchange with humanists, such as Pietro Bembo and Fra’ Giocondo, his fervent interlocutors, patrons, and supporters. The text does not overlook, because of the strength of its relation to the present, the letter to Leo X written by Raphael and Baldassarre Castiglione, recognized as the first document of a conscious reflection on the urgency of preserving the architecture and art of the past, to which today more than then we are called to respond.

The book (96 pages bound in paperback, format 20 x 25 centimeters with 52 color illustrations) costs 18 euros. For information you can visit the Officina Libraria website.

Book comes out with itineraries for discovering the Rome of Raphael painter and architect

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