Raphael, ‘Greatest Influencer of All Time,’ Lands a Generational Show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Is the genius known as the “Prince of Painters” underrated? “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” is a generational show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It contends that its subject is the equal of his contemporaries — Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. The Met calls Raffaello “the greatest influencer of all time” and for centuries, it was the man from Urbino, not the fantastic Florentines, who reigned supreme. “Sublime Poetry” shows why. The scale of this show — 175 works by Raphael, and another 50 or so from his contemporaries, sourced from 62 collections — is even more impressive given that some of Raphael’s greatest work, including the “School of Athens,” is painted onto the walls of the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican. Those frescoes, which adorn the suite of rooms known as the Stanze di Raffaello, are reproduced digitally here, which only gives a preview of their power.The exhibition unfolds chronologically, though Raphael was a prodigy — even the juvenilia are preternatural. Not for nothing does the curator of “Sublime Poetry,” Carmen Bambach, call him the “Mozart of painters.” It’s all there from the first brushstroke — clarity of form, perfect poise, austere grace. He was to the fresco born, as his father, Giovanni Santi, was an accomplished painter at the urbane court of the duke of Urbino. ‘Portrait of a Lady With Unicorn’ by Raphael. 1505-6. Mauro Coen for the Galleria BorgheseFrom Umbria Raphael matriculated to Florence and then to the service of two popes, Julius II and Leo X, at the Vatican. He died at 37 at the height of his powers. For comparison, Michelangelo lived and worked well into his ninth decade. Raphael’s life was short by modern standards, but his catalogue was long, aided by a humming workshop he ran with entrepreneurial energy. He died a rich man, and this blockbuster show is just a part of a titan’s legacy. An early triumph is “Saint Sebastian in Half Length,” a zoomed in portrait that eschews the usual naked and writhing rendition for serene vision at the edge of androgyny. “Angel in Bust-Length” is tiny but mighty, an astonishingly delicate image of a Divine emissary with cascading curls and wings primed for flight. More raw, though still regal, is “Christ Blessing With the Stigmata in a Landscape.” The Christian saviour is rendered with sensual sorrow.One of the triumphs of “Sublime Poetry” is its gathering of portraits from Raphael’s hand. “Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione,” whose handbook, “The Book of the Courtier,” was set at Urbino, captures a friend of the painter. The portrait’s dark charisma, refulgent with Renaissance intrigue, anticipates Rembrandt. The subject of “La Fornarina” is a baker’s daughter reputed to be Raphael’s mistress. Her sly smile is learned from the “Mona Lisa.”Raphael’s great subject was the motif of “Madonna and Child.” No one has ever been more successful at that theme, which his brush endowed with almost infinite inflections. Several are on display here. “The Holy Family With Infant Saint John the Baptist,” a late work, is breathtaking. Its shadows and angles look sideways at da Vinci, but also ahead to the master of cinematic chiaroscuro, Caravaggio, a very different painter who nevertheless owed a debt.‘Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione’ by Raphael. 1514-16. Musée du Louvre“The Alba Madonna” zooms out to limn a landscape, its pinks and blues the colors of a setting sun. A helping of preliminary sketches trace the path to its circular perfection. Gazing at it the viewer can discern why Raphael became the great ancestor of academic and Neoclassical painting. There is nothing here of Michelangelo’s twisting muscles or da Vinci’s uncanny anatomies. The Madonna sits on the ground, watching her son accept the cross that is his fate.Raphael was not only a man of the Renaissance; he was also a Renaissance Man, his creativity unspooled in not only paintings and drawings but also architecture, poetry — hence the show’s title — and tapestries. Three mammoth tapestries hang here, second editions of originals that were made for the Sistine Chapel, to unfurl below Michelangelo’s ceiling. These ones were owned by Spain’s king, Philip II. ‘The Head and Hands of Two Apostles (Auxiliary Cartoon for the Transfiguration’ by Raphael. 1519-20. Ashmolean Museum, University of OxfordMs. Bambach writes that “from about 1510 to the 1850s, Raphael would be idolized as the Italian Renaissance painter of supreme perfection.” Now the Times calls him a “lapsed god.” Still, the financier Leon Black paid a decade ago some $95 million for two drawings. This show took eight years and many fortunes to organize. The Met’s director, Max Hollein does not overstate when he calls it “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Raphael, ‘Greatest Influencer of All Time,’ Lands a Generational Show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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