This unprecedented exhibition, organized by the Louvre in partnership with the Prado Museum, brings together the works produced by Raphael in Rome during the last years of his short life.
This was the period in which his style attained its full maturity, marking without a doubt the apogee of the Italian Renaissance. All of the works presented—church altarpieces, paintings for private devotion, official portraits contrasted with remarkably subtle portraits of friends, as well as a selection of the artist’s most beautiful drawings—attest to Raphael’s extraordinary inventiveness, technical perfection, and unequaled sense of grace.
But Raphael was far from a solitary genius. He worked with the aid of numerous disciples in order to fill the many commissions he received. Apart from their contributions to the work of Raphael, Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni also worked independently on their own projects in his studio. For the first time, the master’s works are presented alongside those executed by his pupils during his lifetime and in the years immediately following his death. The aim is to facilitate an understanding of the extent of involvement of Raphael and his collaborators, underscoring at the same time the intellectual and aesthetic contributions made by the latter to the works bearing the master’s signature.
