Urbino was not only the birthplace of Raphael, but it also played a significant role in his artistic development; throughout his life the city remained an essential reference point for him. This relationship between Raphael and the city of his birth is the starting point for the exhibition due to open in the Palazzo Ducale of Urbino in the spring. The exhibition will examine the history of Urbino from the end of the 1470s throughout the 1480s and the artistic and cultural context that emerged. This was the environment within which the young Raphael trained as an artist along with his father Giovanni Santi, who worked as a painter for dukes and men of letters, while he was also the head of a rich and blossoming bottega, in addition to being the author of the famous Cronaca in which he expressed important opinions on other contemporary painters.
The exhibition, prepared in the Sala del Trono and in the rooms of the apartment of the Duchess of the Palazzo Ducale, home of the National Gallery delle Marche, aims to retrace the initial training of Raphael and the grand cultural expressions of the court of Urbino and, above all, the influence of Raphael’s father Giovanni Santi. The exhibition will present the Masterpieces of the Young Raphael, 20 paintings and 19 original drawings, compared with the paintings of his father and other painters that were close to him in his youth during his development in Urbino.
One section of the exhibition is dedicated to the relationship between the works of Raphael with the most important productions of the Dukedom of Urbino, the maiolica, based on the Raphaelite images, of which some ancient examples will be exhibited. On display for the first time will be a piece derived directly from a drawing by Raphael and not an incision, together with numerous precious examples from this genre.
Raphael was born in 1483 and historical sources remember him as a prodigious child. Despite the fact that historians have often neglected to study his early years, these have emerged as being fundamental in understanding his development as an artist. Beginning with the exhibition in London in 2004, the critics began focussing their attention on his early years, beginning to analyse what are now the key features of this exhibition, the development of Raphael, his relationship with his father and his bottega and above all with the great culture that had as its epicentre the Palazzo Ducale with its collections of art. Raphael, who was quoted as a pupil of his father Giovanni Santi in 1511 in Rome, never severed his ties with the city of his birth; it remained, however, at the heart of his interests including his economic concerns throughout the later period of his career. Baldassar Castiglione, closely connected to the Montefeltros, and Bramante, Raphael’s protector in Rome, were referential figures for him throughout his life.
The exhibition will examine the works of the bottega of Giovanni Santi after his death in 1494. The young Raphael in 1500 inherited his father’s bottega even becoming maestro together with Evangelista da Piandimeleto, for the commission of the pala di S. Agostino in Città di Castello.
The archive research currently taking place has unearthed a number of new documents that had not been published by Pungileoni, these demonstrate the artistic fabric within which the young Raphael grew up and the close artistic and economic links that he maintained with the city of his birth. The presence of Bramante in Urbino, who became his most valid supporter in Rome, the possible influence of other characters present in the city, like Girolamo Genga and Timoteo Viti make it all the more interesting to explore this territory. This will be examined without neglecting the relationship with Perugino that the historians from Vassari onwards had always placed at the centre of the formation of Raphael the artist and shall, therefore, also be investigated within the exhibition.
The exhibition curator is Lorenza Mochi Onori, Superintendent for Artistic, Historical and Ethno-anthropological Heritage of the Marche and includes a prestigious scientific committee that includes the participation of the major specialists on the subject from the most important museum collections in the world: Linda Wolk Simon, of the Metropolitan, New York, recently curator of an exhibition on the same theme; Carol Plazzotta and Tom Henry from the National Gallery in London, curators of the Raphael exhibition held in London in 2004; Silvia Ferino Pagden, of the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna; specialist in Raphaelite drawings Cristina Acidini, Antonio Natali and Marzia Faietti, respectively Superintendent of the Florentine Museums, Director of the Uffizi and Director of the Gabinetto Disegni and Stampe of the Uffizi; Giovanna Perini, professor of History of art at the Carlo Bo University, Urbino; Antonio Paolucci, and Arnold Nesselrath respectively director and curator of the painting department of the Vatican Museums, in addition to the directors of art history form the Superintendence of Urbino.
The exhibition is promoted by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the Regional Directorate for Cultural Heritage and the Landscape of the Marche, the Superintendence for Artistic, Historical and Ethno-anthropological Heritage of the Marche, the Regional Administration of the Marche, the Provincial Administration of Pesaro and Urbino, the Urbino town council and the Cassa di Risparmio di Pesaro Foundation . The organization of the exhibition has been assigned to Gebart in collaboration with Civita. The catalogue is published by Electa.