SCUDERIE DEL QUIRINALE - Quality, first of all, with a scientific project that is the result of three years of work and to which a team of super experts in the sector has collaborated, from Nicholas Penny long director of the National Gallery in London to Dominique Cordellier del Louvre, from the director of the Vatican Museums Barbara Jatta to her predecessor, former superintendent of Florence and former minister of culture Antonio Paolucci. But also the quantity, with a number of works by the master from Urbino, which "never before had they all been seen together".
Rome celebrates 500 years since the death of Raphael, a great painter, but also architect and first historian superintendent of cultural heritage, and after the wonder of the tapestries exhibited for a week in the Sistine Chapel, the countdown is set for the exhibition set up at the Quirinale Stables . Coronavirus epidemic permitting, the opening to the public is scheduled from March 5 to June 2, a "unique and unrepeatable event, with no possibility of replication abroad", underlines the president and CEO of Ales Scuderie del Quirinale Mario De Simoni. The effort has been titanic, he reiterates, with 54 institutions involved in loans, from the Vatican Museums to the Prado, from the National Gallery to the Pinacoteca di Monaco, the Louvre, the National Gallery in Washington. And an insurance value of 4 billion euros, for the 206 works on display (120 by Raphael) higher than even the colossal Leonardo just staged at the Louvre.
The reservations are already many, over 70 thousand tickets purchased, two thousand only in the last twenty-four hours in spite of the increasingly alarming news coming from northern Italy. No cancellation. "All the presences for the inauguration are also confirmed", underlines De Simoni, who also does not hide the concern for the evolution of the events related to public health: "It is clear that we will do what the authorities tell us to do," the cultural manager's arms. In the worst case scenario, he explains, "a temporal shift" will be attempted. So much so, for now we go on, with the charm of Raphael stronger than everything.
Conceived "backwards" with a story that starts from a reconstruction of the artist's tomb in the Pantheon, and then retraces the creative adventure from Rome to Florence to Umbria to its urban roots, the route focuses in particular on the period Roman, "eleven very fruitful years" from 1509 to 6 April 1520, the date of his sudden and premature death, which occurred "after days of continuous and acute fever", as Vasari wrote. These were the years of the patron popes, Julius II first Leo X then, of the very important commissions, from the rooms of the papal apartment with the Segnatura, a masterpiece of his 25 years, to the Tapestries, the works for the rich banker Agostini Chigi and his Villa Farnesina . But it is also the era of the most iconic paintings, from the Veiled to the Fornarina, from the portrait of Julius II to that of Innocent X (all on display) up to the commitment of architect for the construction site of San Pietro.
Central to this story is the Letter to Leo X, which Raffaello wrote together with Baldassare Castiglione, a letter destined to become the very foundation of the Italian idea of protection of cultural heritage, a principle not by chance then inserted in the Constitution : the Stables expose it the precious minute preserved in the Mantua Archive and this is already an emotion. How exciting it will be to see in Italy for the first time the Madonna d'Alba loaned by the National Gallery in Washington or The Madonna della Rosa del Prado, the Madonna dei Tempi sent by the Pinacoteca di Monaco.
"It is the most impressive exhibition that we will have the opportunity to see dedicated to Raphael, but also the most sensible because it is based on scientific research and novelties that have come out of the restorations", notes the director of the Uffizi Eike Schmidt , to whom the idea of a great Roman review. Two in particular "the color of the portrait of Leo X, restored by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure". But also the "rediscovery, which is due to two young researchers Roberta Aliventi and Laura Darimbettina, of a fragment of a preparatory cartoon of a painting by Giulio Romano which is now in Padua" .
An effort, underlines Marzia Faietti curator together with the director of the Scuderie Matteo Lafranconi , "Which was also a retrace the steps of an intellectual path, that of our generation". Among other things, in search of the messages that Raphael's work can still give today. One above all, "the most modern" according to the scholar, "is that of peace" which comes for example from the School of Athens "where many people from different cultures talk to each other". Just in those years, he recalls, Erasmus of Rotterdam's pamphlet came out against the war: "And Raphael, an open spirit, was aligned with the great thinkers of Europe, the greatest pacifists". Long live Raphael. (HANDLE).