Raphael, Interrupted
- patricklewisbaker
- May 31, 2020
- 1 min read
Updated: Aug 21
Poor Raphael! This year, the five-hundredth anniversary of his death, was to have been his year of glory. After major exhibitions of Michelangelo in 2018 and Leonardo da Vinci in 2019, the museum world was in the midst of celebrating the third member of the glorious trinity of High Renaissance art. Then fear of a new coronavirus forced museums everywhere to take down their banners, chase away visitors, and close their doors. Lectures and conferences, canceled! “Raphael and His Circle” at the National Gallery in Washington, closed! “Raphael: The Teacher and His Pupils” at the Musée Condé outside of Paris, closed! Will they reopen once the panic has passed? Nobody knows. At least the currently shuttered “Raffaello” at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome has now announced plans to reopen on June 2. The last has been billed as the largest show ever dedicated to Raphael, with over two hundred masterpieces, including one hundred paintings and drawings by Raphael himself, lent by the Uffizi, the Louvre, the Prado, and London’s National Gallery, among others. And there is hope that reason will return to its throne in time for London’s National Gallery to open its doors in October for what will be the second-largest exhibition of the year.
It’s a kind of tragic coincidence, or perhaps poetic injustice, that celebrations of Raphael’s achievement were interrupted by a deadly virus…