Marche celebrates Raphael. Here are all the exhibitions dedicated to the divine painter

The year 2020 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Raphael Sanzio (Urbino, 1483 - Rome, 1520), and the great artist’s home region, Le Marche, is offering the public a long cultural schedule to remember its painter. Beginning precisely in Urbino, the artist’s birthplace as well as a Unesco city: here the artist was born in 1483 and trained in the house of his father, Giovanni Santi (Colbordolo, 1440 - Urbino, 1494), a humanist, poet and painter at the court of Federico da Montefeltro, lived the first years of his artistic training. It is still possible to visit Raphael’s birthplace where, as Carlo Bo wrote in 1984, “he learned the divine proportion of wits, above all he learned the value of philosophy, of the dignity to be given to his work as a Painter.”

Inside the house it is possible to admire theAnnunciation by Giovanni Santi, and especially the fresco of the Madonna and Child attributed by critics now to Giovanni Santi, now to young Raphael, little more than a child. Of particular interest are a drawing attributed to Bramante (1444 - 1514) and the collection of Renaissance ceramics, a temporary depository of the Volponi Collection. On the upper floor, home of the Raphael Academy, are preserved a number of objects closely connected with Raphael (copies of his paintings, sketches for his monument, tributes of other artists to the painter, and so on) and a rich documentation of the cities’ history in the artistic, civil and religious fields and of the myth that accompanied the figure of the Urbino in various eras. Other Raphaelesque evidence can be found at the Ducal Palace, the residence of the Dukes of Montefeltro commissioned by the dynasty’s best-known exponent, Federico da Montefeltro: one of the artist’s most famous paintings, the Muta, is located here, and events in honor of Raphael begin here.

Indeed, at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, located in the Ducal Palace, the exhibition Raphael Ware. The Colors of the Renaissance (curated by Timothy Wilson and Claudio Paolinelli), which presents 147 fine examples of Italian Renaissance majolica from the world’s largest private collection of its kind, with the aim of focusing attention on that important moment in the Italian artistic tradition with which the name of the great Urbino painter, in English Raphael ware, is associated.

Also here, from July 19 to November 1, 2020, in the Sale del Castellare of the Ducal Palace, it will be possible to visit the exhibition Baldassarre Castiglione and Raphael. Faces and Moments of Court, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi and Elisabetta Losetti and promoted by the National Committee for the Celebrations of the Five Hundredth Anniversary of the Death of Raphael, the Marche Region and the Municipality of Urbino. The exhibition recounts in a wholly original way the story of Baldassarre Castiglione, a central figure of the European Renaissance, known to all for his treatise The Courtier: Castiglione, a very fine intellectual and careful politician, was close to great artists, Raphael first of all, but also to writers, intellectuals, rulers and popes. Drawing on the indispensable source of his Letters, the Urbino exhibition, through seven sections integrated with multimedia solutions, aims to reconstruct Castiglione’s entire story by placing it, correctly, in the context of his time, alongside equally complex and fascinating figures such as those of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, Leo X, the Medici, the Sforza, the Gonzaga and Isabella d’Este, Emperor Charles V and artists (Raphael above all, but also Leonardo, Titian, Giulio Romano and others), intellectuals such as Pietro Bembo and scholars such as Luca Pacioli.

Also from July 18, the Raphael Child project, created by the City of Urbino in close collaboration with the Raphael Academy, offers images, texts and directions in a circuit of discovery, divided into various points, in which the city speaks to visiting children and also tells adults about itself. In addition, the Marche Region also wants to celebrate the Renaissance genius with the exhibition Raphael. An Impossible Exhibition, at the Collegio Raffaello in Urbino from July 25 to Nov. 1, 2020. The exhibition, conceived and curated by Renato Parascandolo and with the scientific direction of the recently deceased Ferdinando Bologna, presents 45 paintings by Raphael (including the fresco of the School of Athens) reproduced on a 1:1 scale and brought together, thus allowing works scattered in 17 different countries to be admired in a single exhibit, a feat that not even the artist himself achieved.

As for the rest of the region, however, we move on to Loreto (province of Ancona), where until August 30, 2020, in the renovated exhibition spaces of the Bastione Sangallo, the City of Loreto pays tribute to Raphael with an exhibition that displays for the first time ever Raphael’s cartoon tapestry depicting Ananias and Saphira, belonging to the Bilotti Ruggi d’Aragona Collection. Also in Loreto, the Pontifical Museum of the Holy House will present Raphael’s Madonna of the Veil or Madonna of Loreto in the fall, to which an exhibition curated by Fabrizio Biferali and Vito Punzi, with advice from the Vatican Museums, will give account of the history of a celebrated subject dear to Raphael, the so-called Madonna del Velo or Madonna of Loreto precisely, a valuable replica of which from the workshop of the Urbino master himself (traces of which have now been lost) was donated in the early 18th century to the Loreto shrine.

Finally, in Jesi (Ancona), the Civic Museums of Palazzo Pianetti, will present (also in the fall) the exhibition Raphael and Angelo Colocci. Beauty and Science in the Construction of the Myth of Ancient Rome, curated by Giorgio Mangani, Francesco Di Teodoro, Ingrid Rowland, Vincenzo Farinella, Fabrizio Biferali, and Paolo Clini. The exhibition aims to explore the connections between Raphael and the Jesuit humanist Angelo Colocci, a point of reference in Rome for artists, antiquarians and poets, through original documents and the use of innovative digital technologies that will allow reconstructions of Raphael’s masterpieces.

In the photo, the tapestry of Ananias and Saphira

Marche celebrates Raphael. Here are all the exhibitions dedicated to the divine painter

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