More than five centuries after his death, Raffaello Sanzio continues to be a central figure of Western culture, capable of crossing different eras and contexts without losing strength or relevance. The exhibition Raphael: Sublime Poetry set up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – built through a network of international loans and a multiannual research work – offers the opportunity to reread its path as a fully immersed experience in the political, economic and cultural system of its time. In this interview, starting from the podcast and from the book Son Raffaello, the divin painter, together with Giulia Silvia Ghia, art historian and city council member of the culture of the I Town Hall of Rome from 2021, we tried to return a more complex image of the artist: not only author of iconic works, but figure able to move between clients, relationships and strategies of diffusion, in a way that, for many aspects, still dialogues with the present.
La locandina della mostra al MET Museum
Dr. Ghia, the first thing I wanted to ask you is very simple, and is: why Raffaello?
Raffaello is a figure that interpreted the beauty of his time so universal that we still recognize it today: looking at his works makes it feel good, almost immediately.
The idea of working on him was born during the Covid, when we were closed in the house. At that time the celebrations fell for 500 years after his death, in 2020: important exhibitions, such as those at the Scuderie del Quirinale, opened and closed according to restrictions. At the same time, there were many new researches, often supported by the Raffaello Committee, but without real diffusion. For whom, like me, was involved in those study groups, it was frustrating to see important discoveries almost unnoticed.
One of the most interesting is the Villa Farnesina, decorated by Raffaello for the banker Agostino Chigi. Studying the frescoes – starting from Galatea and mythological episodes – it turned out that Raffaello was not limited to telling classical mythology: it also recovered techniques and ancient materials. Among these, the so-called “Egyptian Blue”, an artificial pigment invented by the Egyptians, considered the first in history.
Unlike other colours, obtained from natural minerals such as lands and lapislazuli, Egyptian blue had a complex composition and was no longer in use in the Renaissance. Raffaello rediscovers it thanks to the reading of Vitruvius, which in his treatises also describes the recipes of ancient pigments. It is a very concrete example of how the Renaissance was not only imitation of the ancient, but also technical recovery and experimentation.
From here comes the project: to tell a different Raphael, updated in light of recent discoveries, but also more human. The title, “Son Raffaello, the divin painter”, plays on this: on the one hand the myth, on the other the attempt to bring him back to the ground. Because, besides being a genius, he was also a protagonist full of his time, almost an entrepreneur ante litteram of the first real creative cultural industry.
Inside the podcast, one thing that immediately strikes is this Raphael, clearly interpreted by Neri Marcorè, who speaks in person, as if it were contemporary. How much of interpretation and how much of historical and rigorous reconstruction in this narrative choice?
The most complex part was to find a synthesis. For the podcast it was necessary to do so, but to get there it needs a very solid knowledge: study, readings, different materials. Only then can you simplify without trivializing and making everything understandable even to those who do not have a specific training.
The goal was this: to make Raffaello more accessible, almost “pop”. Bring even very technical content – such as diagnostic investigations on paintings, X-rays that reveal the underlying design or so-called repentances – within a story capable of involving even those who do not know the history of art or executive techniques.
The work was then collected heterogeneous materials and returned them in a more immediate narrative form. The first person serves this: it allows Raffaello to “confess”, for example to have modified a figure then discovered precisely thanks to scientific analysis. It makes the story more direct, more immediate, without the filter of an art historian who interprets and media. Not because that filter is less valid, but because it risks being less accessible to those who are not familiar with certain languages.
In the podcast, however, not only speaks Raffaello. The eight episodes are built as parallel monologues: he tells, for example, a moment of his life or a work, and next to him there are other voices, such as the patrons or figures of his time. It is not a true dialogue, but a fitting of perspectives: the same episode is seen from more points of view, putting together the story of the artist and that of who that work wanted it, commissioned and lived.
Al podcast then sided with the book of the podcast. It is a book that returns the political, social and economic context in which Raffaello lived and operated. How complex was his reality, the sector in which he worked, compared to today? Was it easier to be an artist in rebirth?
I think he hasn’t changed that much. More than anything else changes the context, but the ability to grasp the opportunities of one’s time remains central.
Raffaello was born in Italy of the municipalities and the lords. She remains orphaned very early – first the mother, then the father – and at twelve years she is already working in the family shop. From there, however, he immediately understands that Urbino is close to him. Thanks to his father’s contacts and the ties with the Montefeltro court, he manages to enter larger circuits and moves to Florence.
In Florence, however, it is not all simple. It is located in an environment dominated by figures such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who in those years worked at enterprises like the great battles in the Salone della Signoria. Raffaello does not sink immediately there, and in fact continues to work also for Umbrian clients. But he understands that he has to move differently: he points a lot on relationships and on clients, and develops a great skill in portraits, where he can grasp something more intimate than subjects.
At the same time it produces many Madonnes, which were among the most popular works: almost “necessary” objects in the houses of the time. That’s how he builds his network.
The turning point arrives with Rome and the pontificate of Pope Julius II. Raffaello arrives there already recommended, enters into a competitive environment and is immediately tested. After a first intervention in the Room of Marking, the Pope entrusts him with the entire construction site. From that moment on, he has been coordinating other artists, even more established than him: a complex position, which generates tensions but which he manages to build a real team.
From there onwards his work expands: he is not only a painter, but also an architect, a designer, and arrives to hold institutional positions such as the superintendent of ancient Rome. In this sense it can be seen almost as an entrepreneur of culture.
Compared to today, perhaps there was less competition in numerical terms, but the net we have today was completely missing. There were no rapid communication tools, nor the possibility to easily circulate ideas and works. Today we are many more, but also infinitely more connected.
That is why saying that it was “ easier” to make the artist in the Renaissance is a bit misleading: they were different difficulties. In the end, then as today, it made the difference the ability to move within its own time.
La copertina del libro “Son Raffaello, il Divin Pittore“
They make some parallels smile compared to modernity: you can talk, about Raffaello, in terms of labor mobility, internship, pitch, upselling, blue ocean… all this gives us a “modern” figure of Raffaello, entrepreneur, manager. Surely something that squeezes our eye on today’s America, the American dream that is so much told: can it be something that helps us to tell the character and go beyond the aesthetics, understanding not only the works but also their context?
Yes, and in part it is exactly what we tried to do, especially in the book. There is a first section that in the podcast did not find space, in which Raffaello is placed within his time: a fragmented Italy between states, lords and the Papal State, much more extensive than today. To tell this context also serves to better understand his works.
For example, in the frescoes of the Vatican Rooms episodes are directly linked to the politics of time. Pope Julius II, who was a warrior pope, personally participated in military campaigns – such as the one against the French in the territories of Bologna – and after a defeat he vowed not to cut his beard. This detail is reflected in the portraits: in the Room of the Mark appears shaved, in the next one with the beard. Without knowing these episodes, you lose an important reading level.
But this is exactly the point: Raffaello was not only an artist, he was immersed in a complex system, made of power, relationships, clients and opportunities. And here the parallelisms with today begin to make sense.
One of the most interesting cases is the diffusion of his works. Seeing the success of Albrecht Dürer’s prints, he understands that the value is not only in the original work, but also in its reproducibility. He then entrusts himself to Marcantonio Raimondi, a very skilled engraver, which translates his work on copper plates. From there prints are produced that circulate throughout Europe.
It is, in fact, a distribution strategy: Raffaello becomes “big” also because his images travel. This is also how he becomes a recognized and affirmed artist, although he died very young, at 37 years old.
We approach the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, Raphael: Sublime Poetry. But first, is there something different in the way Raffaello is perceived in the United States compared to the Italian public, even perhaps by virtue of this character who, we tell, squeezes a little eye on American capitalism?
Yes, there is a difference. In Italy Raffaello is not only the artist who meets in an exhibition: it is a more widespread, almost structural presence. In Rome, for example, you will find it in very different contexts, from churches to monumental spaces, from Villa Farnesina to the Vatican Rooms. It is part of a daily narrative, and for this reason some things we tend to give them for granted.
In the United States, however, this does not happen. Here Raffaello enters mainly in the space of the museum, and therefore becomes fundamental the way it is accompanied and explained. I, for example, always look carefully at captions, because for me I am an essential element of welcome: not only in terms of physical accessibility, but also of understanding. And in this exhibition I noticed that they do a great job, because they do nothing for granted. They explain, for example, the Marches, Urbino, the fact that Raffaello was a different Italy, made of municipalities, lords and regional states. For an American audience this is necessary; for an Italian audience perhaps smiles, because many of these things we almost absorb them by cultural familiarity.
The most difficult aspect to understand, however, is another: the original context of the works. That is the fact that many were born for a precise place, for a church, for a chapel, for a specific client, and that they then dialogue with a space and with other images. Today we would talk almost of site-specific works, but in reality this relationship between work, place and contractor has always existed. Perceiving it to those who see those isolated works, inside the museum, is not simple.
In my opinion, the exhibition is also successful in this, without focusing on the great most iconic masterpieces. In fact, I find the right choice not to move too delicate or too central works for the collections that preserve them. Many works by Raffaello are on the table, therefore on wood: a live support, sensitive to moisture and temperature changes, much more delicate to move than the canvas.
On the other hand, the exhibition tells a lot about Raffaello’s work and his creative process. There are so many designs, some very rare, and this part hit me a lot. For example, the path dedicated to the transport of Christ to the tomb of the Borghese Gallery, known as Pala Baglioni: instead of moving the shovel, he tells his genesis through preparatory studies, comparisons with the ancient and even with a sarcophagus of the collection of the Met showing a similar composition. So it emerges clearly how much for Raffaello the ancient was a continuous source of inspiration.
This same story, among other things, is also told in the podcast: Raffaello reconstructs the work done for that work, while parallelly intervenes the voice of Atalanta Baglioni, the mother of the young Federico to whom the shovel was dedicated, who tells the commission and the pain from which it was born. It is one of the cases where the story of the podcast helps to return the pathos and the human context of the work.
That is why I would say that in the United States Raffaello is perceived perhaps more mediated, more explained, more guided. In Italy, instead, it is more immersed in the cultural landscape and therefore more “natural”, but also more exposed to the risk of being taken for granted.
To me the exhibition, even starting from an already in-depth knowledge, has however enriched a lot. I saw materials that I only knew from books and I think it deserves time: ideally it should be seen calmly, or even more than once, because it really has a lot to return.
For this exhibition there are 200 works that tell the entire arch of Raffaello’s career. In your opinion, what is the aspect of Raffaello that is still underrated today?
Perhaps the most underrated aspect is human. Raffaello is often told as a sort of perfect “war machine”, one that to get where he arrived had to move aggressively. Studying it, however, emerges another image: that of an extremely empathetic person.
This dimension is also understood in sources. Giorgio Vasari, in the Vines, describes him as a very beloved man and binds his death to the excesses of the love passions. Other hypotheses speak instead of a possible poisoning, a sign of a competitive and also violent environment, in which rivalries and tensions were strong.
Beyond the reconstructions, what strikes is what emerges from his letters, especially those addressed to his uncle: there one perceives the need to prove to be independent, to be at the height of the father figure, which was in turn an artist. It is a more fragile side, less “mythed”.
Then there is the way he worked. Raffaello was not only a great painter, but also someone able to build and manage a team. He involved the workshop a lot, he entrusted parts of his works to his collaborators, often starting from preparatory drawings that were then developed together. It is also for this reason that there are more versions of the same subject, especially in the Madonne, and that sometimes it is difficult to distinguish what is entirely of his hand.
This ability to team, to empower others, says a lot about his character. More than an isolated artist, he was someone who worked in a collective system, enhancing it.
The podcast is also born from here: from the attempt to return this more human side, less distant. Let him speak in the first person serves precisely to this, to remove a little distance and to make emerge not only the “divin painter”, but a curious, concrete figure, immersed in his time.
Uno scorcio della mostra al MET con tre ritratti; da sinistra verso destra: Ritratto di Bindo Altoviti (1515), Ritratto di Baldassarre Castiglione (1514-1515), La Fornarina (1518-1520)
Last question: of this exhibition I was very impressed by the list of lenders. We know that this is an exhibition of international loans and, without taking away anything from other countries that appear there even several times, well, there is an almost endless spleen of Italian lender agencies: Accademia Carrara, Galleria Borghese, Galleria Nazionale Barberini Corsini, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Fondazione Brescia Musei, just to name a few. Surely this tells us the great artistic heritage that we have here in Italy – and of the rest, Raffaello is “our robe”, even if it was not today’s Italy but we like to think it always so for the things born and lived in the Peninsula, as with the Romans. But he also tells us about a relationship with the United States that this show suggella, right?
Yes, and it’s a very obvious aspect. This exhibition is the result of a long work, about seven years, made of studies and above all of relationships built with museums and institutions. The curator worked extensively, involving many bodies, especially Italians.
The works coming from Italy are 37, but they could have been more. The point is that many are difficult to move: for conservative reasons, because they are too delicate, or because they are central to the collections that keep them. For some museums, perhaps smaller, to lend the only Raffaello means to temporarily lose a fundamental element of its identity and also of attraction to the public.
On the other hand, in the United States – and in particular at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – there is a structure that makes possible operations of this scale. Here come the big private supporters, like Morgan Stanley, who invest on projects of the highest level. Not surprisingly in recent years, exhibitions have been held on Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci: they focus on figures that represent a globally recognized excellence.
An exhibition like this has very high costs – we talk about 10 million dollars – and without this kind of support it would be difficult to achieve. It is not only an economic question, but also a model: American museums, although formally private, work as deeply public institutions. They are born and supported thanks to the contribution of the people and the great financiers, and are perceived as a collective good.
This is also reflected in the way the exhibitions are built: they have to speak to a wide audience, to return more levels of reading, to allow those who enter to recognize themselves somehow in what they see.
In Italy the model is different. The museums are public and the state has a central role, even in the relationship with any private sponsors. This guarantees strong protection, but makes it more complex – even at a cultural level – a collaboration structured with the large-scale private.
So yes, this exhibition also tells this: on the one hand the density of the Italian heritage, on the other the American ability to value it on an international scale, thanks to a system of resources, relationships and investments that allows to put together such ambitious operations.
L’articolo Giulia Silvia Ghia tells Raffaello, beyond the masterpieces proviene da IlNewyorkese.
