Linda Wolk-Simon

Raphael has been the indispensable reference point for countless artists, great and small, Italian and non-Italian. His frescoes in the Vatican quickly asserted themselves as paradigms of the Grand Manner, while his serenely beautiful Madonnas and calmly dignified portraits redefined their respective genres. The combination of clarity and complexity in his compositions results in an ineffable quality of innate grace that many artists have since tried to emulate. Not only Parmigianino, Carracci, Poussin, Ingres, and Degas but Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Manet, and Picasso also mined Raphael's works for inspiration. The Colonna Altarpiece is the only altarpiece by Raphael in an American collection. Raphael painted this work in his early twenties for a convent of nuns in Perugia on the eve of his move to Florence. The two main panels of the altarpiece were bought by former Museum president J. Pierpont Morgan, and later given as a gift to the Museum's Collection in 1916. This volume accompanies an exhibition that reunites all seven parts of the altarpiece for the first time since the seventeenth century: the two main panels in the Metropolitan together with the five components of its predella, divided among the Metropolitan, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and the National Gallery and the Dulwich Picture Gallery, both in London. Also included is a fine selection of paintings and drawings by Raphael executed during the same period, 1502-5 A.D. Additionally, this exhibition showcases a preliminary study, now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, for the landscape in the Metropolitan's altarpiece, as well as the beautiful painting Madonna and Child with a Book from the Norton Simon Art Foundation in Pasadena. These works document one of the pivotal moments in Raphael's career, when the young artist abandoned Perugia, in Umbria, and set his sights on Florence, where he encountered the work of Fra Bartolommeo and Leonardo da Vinci. To contextualize the transformative effect of this move, paintings by his master, Perugino, as well as by Pinturicchio and Fra Bartolommeo are also exhibited. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

The Colonna Altarpiece

Raphael at the Metropolitan

Barbara Furlotti

Guido Rebecchini

Palazzo Te torna a celebrare, a distanza di trent'anni dalla grande monografica del 1989, il genio di Giulio Romano. L'esposizione, allestita nelle Sale Napoleoniche, indaga la relazione tra immagini erotiche del mondo classico e invenzioni figurative prodotte nella prima metà del Cinquecento in Italia, esponendo dipinti, disegni e oggetti preziosi provenienti da venti istituzioni, tra cui il Metropolitan Museum of Art di New York e l'Ermitage di San Pietroburgo. Concentrandosi sul lavoro di Giulio Romano, il percorso espositivo evidenzia la capillare diffusione di un vasto repertorio di rappresentazioni erotiche nella cultura artistica cinquecentesca e svela le influenze esistenti tra cultura alta e cultura bassa nella produzione di tali immagini. Exhibition: Palazzo Te, Mantova, Italy (06.10.2019-06.01.2020).

Art and Desire

Giulio Romano

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)

Stijn Alsteens

Carmen Bambach

Published in conjunction with an exhibition on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 12-Aug 15, 2010.

Drawings from the Tobey Collection : Correggio to Tiepolo

An Italian Journey

Keith Christiansen

Andrea Bayer

Davide Gasparotto

Tommaso Mozzati

Julia Siemon

Carlo Falciani

Elizabeth Cropper

Sefy Hendler

Antonella Fenech Kroke

Elizabeth Pilliod

Between 1512 and 1570, Florence underwent dramatic political transformations. As citizens jockeyed for prominence, portraits became an essential means not only of recording a likeness but also of conveying a sitter’s character, social position, and cultural ambitions. This fascinating book explores the ways that painters (including Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, and Francesco Salviati), sculptors (such as Benvenuto Cellini), and artists in other media endowed their works with an erudite and self-consciously stylish character that made Florentine portraiture distinctive. The Medici family had ruled Florence without interruption between 1434 and 1494. Following their return to power in 1512, Cosimo I de’ Medici, who became the second Duke of Florence in 1537, demonstrated a particularly shrewd ability to wield culture as a political tool in order to transform Florence into a dynastic duchy and give Florentine art the central position it has held ever since. Featuring more than ninety remarkable paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and medals, this volume is written by a team of leading international authors and presents a sweeping, penetrating exploration of a crucial and vibrant period in Italian art.

The Medici: Portraits and Politics 1512–1570

Linda Wolk-Simon

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