“Raphael at the Metropolitan:
The ‘Colona Altarpiece’ ”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York.
Augst 30, 2006-December 16, 2006
Quick. What other prominent Italian Renaissance artist, besides Raphael, has enjoyed the posthumous privilege of having his name anglicized? The answer, of course, is Titian. But then are Tiziano and Raffaello so much more difficult to pronounce in English than Donatello … or Ghirlandajo? And yet there is a reason. Not only did the Venetian and the Marchigian define and transform the subsequent course of European art, they came to occupy a central place in the artistic consciousness of England and its people. Ever since the seventeenth century, both painters have been avidly studied, revered, and very successfully collected in England, and both have recently been commemorated in London by large, comprehensive, and lavishly installed monographic exhibitions. Of the nearly ninety paintings and drawings by Raphael that were gathered for the great show held at the National Gallery at the end of 2004, almost half were from English collections. These works, some of capital importance and many seen together for the first time, illustrated the astonishing breadth of accomplishment attained by this genius during an equally astonishing and prolific career lasting barely two decades. Needless to say, the parallel with Mozart has all too often been cited.
There is, however, one phase of Raphael’s art that can never be adequately represented, certainly not beyond the walls of the Vatican in Rome. It comprises the years between 1510 and