The remains kept in the tomb of the Pantheon in Rome belong to Raffaello Sanzio. The confirmation comes from the first 3D facial reconstruction made from a cast of the painter's remains, by the Tor Vergata University of Rome, which was compared with the known self-portraits of the artist. The study, the scientists themselves announce, will shortly be submitted for publication in the journal Nature. "This research - says Olga Rickards, one of the world's leading experts in molecular anthropology - provides concrete evidence for the first time that the skeleton exhumed in the Pantheon in 1833 belongs to Raphael".
The research was conducted in collaboration with the Vigamus Foundation and the Raffaello Academy in Urbino. "So far - explains Mattia Falconi, associate of Molecular Biology in Tor Vergata - despite the accuracy of the investigations carried out in that year (1833) by the anatomist Antonio Trasmondo, main architect of the last exhumation of Raphael, performed with non-resolutive methods of the time but in the vanguard for the time, there was no certainty that the remains found and preserved in the Pantheon were really those of Sanzio ".
To dispel doubts, a plaster cast of Raphael's skull was used, produced by the trainer Camillo Torrenti in 1833 on the occasion of the artist's exhumation. The biological profile of the individual under examination was initially determined. Rebuilding was done manually on the computer.
Finally, the reconstruction was compared with Raphael's self-portraits and with paintings by other authors in order to evaluate the possibility that the painter was the subject represented. "The morphological and metric analysis of the cast - explains Falconi - allowed us to establish that the skull, showing physical characteristics compatible with the appearance of the character, could belong to Raffaello Sanzio, thus justifying a possible 3D reconstruction phase of the The final results obtained are consistent and completely superimposable with the profile of the great Urbinate that has been transmitted to us by historical evidence and his artistic works ".
