La Fornarina, with her beauty, seductive and sweet at the same time, tells of the Master's loving gaze. At her side, the Young Woman with Unicorn, with that precious medallion around her neck. That is, one of Raphael's first (if not the first) portraits of a woman, alongside his last and most famous in the world. Both are the result of a long gestation, as studies and x-rays have revealed. And both shrouded in mystery about the real identity of the two women, today exceptionally exhibited to the public together. It is the most unique and precious opportunity of the Raphael, Titian, Rubens exhibition. Masterpieces from the Borghese Gallery to Palazzo Barberini, which until June 30th exceptionally brings fifty works normally kept in the villa of Scipione Borghese in the south wing of the main floor of the Palazzo delle GallerieNazionali di Arte Antica. A project born and implemented "in just two months", as the directors of the two museums, Francesca Cappelletti and Thomas Clement Salomon, say, transforming the temporary decommissioning of the Borghese Gallery for the works financed with the Pnrr into an opportunity.
"An exhibition - comments the general director of the Mic museums, Massimo Osanna - which I applaud for the very short time in which it was created and for the networking capacity demonstrated".
The result is a journey that brings into dialogue the collections of two crucial figures of seventeenth-century Roman political and cultural life, such as Maffeo Barberini and Scipione Borghese, and which allows absolute masterpieces such as Portrait of a Man by Antonello da Messina, the Madonna and Child by Giovanni Bellini, the Madonna with Child, Saint John and angels by Sandro Botticelli, Susanna and the Elders by Peter Paul Rubens, Sacred Love AmorProfano by Titian, the Sermon of the Baptist by Paolo Veronese.
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