Vicenza, at Palladio Museum an exhibition on Raphael architect

Everyone knows about the painter Raphael, but how many know that he was also a great architect, one of the most influential of the entire Renaissance? That is what Raphael intends to reveal. Born an Architect, the exhibition curated by Guido Beltramini, Howard Burns, and Arnold Nesselrath scheduled from April 6 to July 9, 2023, at the Palladio Museum in Vicenza, Italy, created as part of the initiatives of the National Committee “Raffaello 1520-2020.”

In particular, what the exhibition is determined to show is that Raphael was not born a painter and then became an architect, but that he was an architect from the very beginning of his activity as an artist, and that even in his figurative works he immediately lives a new and innovative idea of space, fueled by the study and imitation of the architecture of ancient Rome. It is Raphael who defined the theoretical and practical status of architectural drawing, with which buildings were designed for the next five centuries, until the computer drawing revolution.

It is again Raphael who transformed the study of ancient Roman architecture, placing it at the basis of forms and decorations of the new Renaissance architecture. It is Raphael who lays the foundations of the “invention” of architectural orders; who first designs the giant columns that Michelangelo will develop in the Capitol decades later; who builds “bespoke” palaces for the high officials of Pope Leo X’s inner circle, making them recognizable in the city as true masonry portraits. It is Raphael who revives the ancient Roman tradition of country living with the first Renaissance villa, Villa Madama, on the slopes of Monte Mario.

Original drawings, including invaluable autographs by Raphael from the Royal Institute of British Architects in London and the Uffizi, notebooks and manuscripts from the Central Library in Florence, antique sculptures and Renaissance books, present on display not only the architecture built by Raphael but also those that remained on paper or were destroyed, such as Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila. Two very high fidelity reproductions of the huge, untransportable cartoons for the Sistine Chapel tapestries, such as the Sacrifice of Lystra or the Preaching of St. Paul at Athens, will bring the inseparable intertwining of Raphael as painter and architect to the exhibition.

Accompanying the exhibition is a scholarly catalog that brings together the results of new research on Raphael’s built and painted architecture. In particular, the volume, which brings together contributions from the curators and all the specialists who participated in the working group, sees reconstructions of Raphael’s lost projects published for the first time.

The exhibition is curated by architectural historians Guido Beltramini (Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Vicenza), Howard Burns (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, emeritus) and Arnold Nesselrath (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). Alongside them, the research project involves a group of international specialists: Simone Baldissini (CISA Andrea Palladio, Vicenza), Amedeo Belluzzi (University of Florence), Maria Beltramini (University of Rome Tor Vergata), Christiane Denker Nesselrath (independent scholar), Pierre Gros (Institut de France, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Paris), Francesco Marcorin (CISA Andrea Palladio, Vicenza), Timo Strauch (Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin).

The staging is by architect and theater director Andrea Bernard.

Hours Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. (last admission 5:30 p.m.) Tuesdays by reservation, groups min. 10 people information

www.palladiomuseum.org/rinascimento

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Vicenza, at Palladio Museum an exhibition on Raphael architect

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