Met’s Raphael opens
The Met opened ‘Raphael: Sublime Poetry’ on March 29 — a blockbuster of 200+ masterpieces on view through June 28. (x.com) If you’re into classical—this is a major seasonal must-see with a concentrated run that ends in late June. (x.com)
The Met assembled more than 200 works for the show, including over 170 of Raphael’s drawings alongside paintings, tapestries, and decorative arts. (metmuseum.org) The exhibition was organized by Carmen C. Bambach, the Met’s Marica F. and Jan T. Vilcek Curator of Drawings and Prints, who has been assembling the loans and scholarship for roughly seven years. (theartnewspaper.com) Highlights on loan include The Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape (the “Alba Madonna”) from the National Gallery of Art and Portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione from the Louvre, with other key works such as Lady with a Unicorn from the Galleria Borghese and an Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia from the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. (metmuseum.org) The presentation pairs finished paintings with preparatory studies and tapestries to foreground Raphael’s process, using the unusually large group of drawings to show how compositions evolved. (metmuseum.org) The Met is the sole venue for this retrospective—the institution has stated the exhibition will not travel to other museums after its New York run. (artnews.com) The show is accompanied by a 35‑minute audio guide narrated by Isabella Rossellini and a fully illustrated catalogue edited by Carmen C. Bambach and published by The Met in association with Yale University Press. (metmuseum.org)
