An exhibition in Perugia on Raphael and Umbria that is both digital and ... real

From Sept. 18, 2020, to Jan. 6, 2021, Perugia is hosting the exhibition Raphael in Umbria and His Legacy in the Academy, staged at the CariPerugia Arte Foundation’s headquarters in Palazzo Baldeschi on the occasion of the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of the death of Raphael Sanzio (Urbino, 1483 - Rome, 1520). It is an exhibition halfway between real and virtual: in fact, Raphael will arrive in a digital version (visitors will even be able to see him in discussion with his father and his master Pietro Vannucci, known as Perugino), thanks to digital reproductions of all his works related to Umbria, now preserved in the world’s most important museums. But there is alsol a “real” part: the works of great masters that tell of his artistic legacy.

In fact, the exhibition is divided into two sections: the first curated by Francesco Federico Mancini, with the direction of the Fondazione CariPerugia Arte and the contribution of the Soprintendenza Archivistica dell’Umbria e delle Marche and the Archivio di Stato di Perugia, the second, with the subtitle L’Accademia di Perugia e Raffaello: From Minardi and Wicar to the Twentieth Century, carried out by the Perugia Academy of Fine Arts “Pietro Vannucci” and curated by Alessandra Migliorati, Stefania Petrillo and Saverio Ricci, with coordination by Giovanni Manuali, conservator of the Academy’s Assets. Raphael had a very close relationship with Umbria: in Perugia, the artist spent more or less six years of his life, from about 1500 to 1505. Perugia and Città di Castello represent the places in Umbria where Raphael took his first steps and carried out a significant part of his artistic training, which began when his father Giovanni Santi asked Pietro Vannucci to accept his son into his workshop to perfect the art of painting.

The two works by Raphael still preserved in Umbria are the Gonfalone della Trinità in the Pinacoteca comunale of Città di Castello and the fresco of San Severo at the chapel of the same name attached to the Camaldolese church, now owned by the municipality of Perugia. All of Raphael’s Umbrian works ( twelve in all are known) are now brought together at Palazzo Baldeschi in an experience that allows visitors to explore their details as well, accompanied by information read by a narrative voice. From the St. Nicholas of Tolentino Altarpiece-(now reduced to fragments and virtually reconstructed through some of Raphael’s autograph drawings and an 18th-century copy), through the Gonfalone of the Trinity, the Mond Crucifixion, the Marriage of the Virgin (compared with Perugino’s work of the same name), the Colonna Altarpiece, the Oddi Altarpiece, the Ansidei Altarpiece, the Madonna del Libro (better known as the Madonna Conestabile), the San Severo fresco, the Baglioni Deposition, the Madonna and Child with Saints (the famous altarpiece also known as the Madonna of Foligno), and finally the Coronation of the Virgin, a work by Giulio Romano and Giovan Francesco Penni based on a design by Raphael.

In another room of the palace, again thanks to technology, starting with famous portraits some actors in Renaissance costumes will bring the Urbino painter to the stage through two dialogues: the first (set in 1494), is a conversation in which an 11-year-old Raphael is brought by his father Giovanni Santi to Perugino’s workshop, who is asked to welcome him among his pupils. The second, at this point Raphael is 21, is a comparison with Perugino that revolves around the two masterpieces depicting the Marriage of the Virgin. Accompanying the visitor on this journey are three Umbrian Renaissance works belonging to the collection of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia and created by three masters from whom Raphael was inspired and with whom he related when he arrived in Umbria: Perugino’s Madonna and Child and Two Cherubs, Pintoricchio ’s Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and St. John by Pintoricchio, and Luca Signorelli’s St. Stephen Stoned.

The second section of the exhibition, titled The Academy of Perugia and Raphael: from Minardi and Wicar to the Twentieth Century, is in turn divided into four thematic and chronological parts that aim to show and demonstrate how, throughout the nineteenth century, Perugia, thanks to the presence of Tommaso Minardi, was an epicenter along with Rome of the purist current and the return to religiously inspired art. In fact, the Academy was a nursery of talented painters who reworked the lesson of the old masters, Perugino and Raphael first of all, updating their models and style, interpreting that neo-Renaissance taste, which was also much appreciated by the international collectors and market of the time. Thus, after an anthology of self-portraits of the artists who were inspired by Raphael, the exhibition itinerary unfolds in three sections devoted respectively to The cult of Raphael between classicism and purism, with works from the school of Baldassare Orsini, Tommaso Minardi and Wicar; Raphael ’docet: the copy and the invention, which traces the long season of the Perugia Academy that flourished on the fruitful legacy left by Tommaso Minardi; Raphael in applied arts and wall decoration, which presents the public with a varied and surprising selection of works from the early 19th century to the early 20th century.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a special “COVID free” catalog, produced by Fabrizio Fabbri Editore with an innovative certified printing system capable of breaking down the bacterial load and some of the main microbial and fungal agents, developed with printer Graphic Masters in collaboration with three specialized analysis laboratories. For all info on the exhibition, it is possible to link to the CariPerugia Arte Foundation website.

Image: Pinturicchio, Madonna and Child with St. John

An exhibition in Perugia on Raphael and Umbria that is both digital and ... real

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