La Venaria Reale 2015
Raphael. The Sunshine of the Arts.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Page 04 Raphael. The Sunshine of the Arts. • Page 05 The exhibition • Page 11 General Information
La Venaria Reale – Communication & Press Office Piazza della Repubblica 4 – 10078 Venaria Reale (Turin) +39 011 4992300 (Main Switchboard - Offices) - +39 011 4992333 (Call Center) [email protected] - www.lavenaria.it 3
Raphael The Sunshine of the Arts.
"[…] the famous Raphael, in whose lifetime great Mother Nature feared to be outdone, and at whose death feared to die." Pietro Bembo
Rooms of the Arts, Reggia di Venaria From 26 September 2015 to 24 January 2016
Curated by Gabriele Barucca and Sylvia Ferino
Scientific Committee: Antonio Paolucci (chair), Cristina Acidini, Anna Imponente, Lorenza Mochi Onori, Maria Luisa Papotti, Mario Scalini, Maria Sframeli, Maria Rosaria Valazzi
Organization: Consorzio La Venaria Reale, with the participation of MondoMostre srl and Fondazione per la Cultura Torino
Partners: Intesa San Paolo
With the support of: Compagnia di San Paolo
Under the patronage of: The City of Turin Città metropolitana di Torino
From 26 September 2015 to 24 January 2016 the Reggia di Venaria - the grandiose estate located just outside Turin, a masterpiece of architectural and landscape, enlisted as one of UNESCO's World Heritage sites - devotes an extraordinary exhibition to Raphael (Urbino, 1483 - Rome, 1520), the sublime artist who attained unprecedented heights of perfection in the 16th century, with loans from leading Italian and international museums.
The exhibition is curated by Gabriele Barucca (Authority for Fine Arts and Landscape of the Marche Region) and Sylvia Ferino (former Director of the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna), with a Scientific Committee made up of eminent scholars chaired by Antonio Paolucci, Director of the Vatican Museums. The late Enrico Castelnuovo, Professor Emeritus at Scuola Normale di Pisa, also contributed to the project.
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The exhibition
This exhibition is a unique and very special event that presents, for the first time ever and in an unprecedented display consisting of more than 130 pieces, Raphael's role as the inspirator of a vast production of the so-called arti congeneri (lesser or decorative arts). This definition, provided by Vasari, referred to the applied arts that assimilated in their techniques the prodigious figurative inventions of the great artist from Urbino.
Raphael's masters and early works The first section of the exhibition illustrates, through a number of magnificent paintings, the life of Raphael from his formative years as a young artist (in Urbino and Città di Castello) to his early maturity (in Perugia, Siena and Florence).
The display opens with a series of beautiful works by the masters who played a crucial role in Raphael's artistic career: his father Giovanni Santi (Muses series from Palazzo Corsini), Luca Della Robbia (Madonna of the Apple, Bargello, Florence), Pietro Perugino (St. Mary Magdalene from Palazzo Pitti, Florence), Pinturicchio (Madonna of the Peace from Pinacoteca Civica di San Severino Marche) and Luca Signorelli (Crucifixion from Galleria Nazionale delle Marche of Urbino). These are accompanied by a number of Raphael's early paintings: the predella with Stories from the life of Mary (Fano, Church of Santa Maria Nuova) in which the young Raphael collaborated with his master Perugino, the Processional Cross (today at Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan), St. Sebastian (Bergamo, Accademia Carrara), and The Angel (Brescia, Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo) which is a fragment from the Baronci Altarpiece for St. Augustin in Città di Castello.
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The "arti congeneri" and the myth of Raphael as the Sunshine of the Arts The exhibition aims to approach Raphael's genius from an unusual and unexpected standpoint, that is the illustration of his creative genius benefitting what Vasari called the "arti congeneri", those "lesser arts" in which his cartoons and drawings were transposed and interpreted.
In addition to an important tapestry section, the display presents an exquisite set of maiolicas depicting Raphael’s cartoons and drawings. In the 16th and 17th centuries these objects served to popularize the prodigious figurative inventions of the Italian master in Italy and across Europe. Raphael's fortune and his myth spread most notably through the prints of the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi (1480 ca - 1534) from Bologna, that represented "models" completed by the master, in some cases "early ideas", and intermediate drawings. Raphael also provided to Marcantonio some drawings made especially to be turned into engravings. Around 1515-1516 other engravers joined Raphael's workshop at a time when interest was growing around his inventions: thus, in addition to Marcantonio, "Raphael's Team" came to include Marco Dente from Ravenna, Agostino Veneziano and Ugo da Carpi.
It is thanks to the extraordinary success of those engravings based on Raphael's work that, starting in the first quarter of the 16th century, numerous craftsmen started to transpose Raphael's graphical works into their arts and crafts, including sculptors, smelters, ceramists, mosaicists, engravers, and armorers. The exhibition presents this extraordinary wealth of materials and techniques. In particular, special emphasis is placed on 16th century "historiated" maiolicas whose inspiration and development owes much to Raphael's work. These pieces were crafted in workshops in Casteldurante, Pesaro, Gubbio, Urbino and later Faenza, Deruta, and other smaller towns. Moreover, rock crystals, metal plaques, enamels, glasswork, armory and wood carvings, including one of the magnificent doors of the Vatican Rooms (the one between the Room of Heliodorus and the Room of Constantine) further illustrate the artistic legacy of the eminent master.
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The exhibition narration touches on various themes and pictorial works that define Raphael's mastery as an inspirator of styles and iconographic models, illuminating the arts like a bright Sunshine. One of the main subjects that are commonly identified with Raphael is the Madonna with Child, represented in this exhibition by the Madonna del Granduca from the Galleria Palatina of Palazzo Pitti, a splendid example of Raphael's sweet and human portraits of the Virgin Mary. This masterpiece is accompanied by two beautiful ancient replicas of the Bridgewater Madonna (Naples, Museo di Capodimonte) and the Madonna d'Orléans by Gerolamo Giovenone (Turin, Museo Civico d'Arte Antica). Also on display are a set of polychrome majolica plates, cups and plaques that were influenced by his most famous inventions, like the Madonna of Foligno, or La Belle Jardinière, that is found in the high-relief by Girolamo della Robbia.
The presence in the exhibition of the superb painting by Raphael depicting Ezekiel's Vision (Florence, Palazzo Pitti) provides the opportunity to compare the drawing by Rubens (Florence, Museo Horne) and the large Flemish tapestry from the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas of Madrid as precious offshoots of the famous model by Raphael. Another masterpiece from the master's mature phase follows, The Ecstasy Of St. Cecilia from Bologna, an extremely famous work that deeply influenced devotional painting in Europe in the 17th century. The painting is still encased in its original frame, a splendid artifact by the engraver Giovanni Barili, with whom Raphael also collaborated for the doors of the Vatican Rooms and Loggias. This extraordinary artistic "following" is also exemplified in religious themes, stories and myths, like The Judgement of Paris: the many pieces on display include richly decorated shields and a fabulous burgonet helmet from Dresden. Another famous iconographic model inspired by Raphael is also evoked here through several pieces and techniques: The Triumph of Galatea, the 1511 fresco at the Farnesina, the Roman villa of the banker Agostino Chigi.
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Raphael was also particularly keen on the arts of goldsmithing and mosaic, for which he provided drawings and projects for works and artifacts: around 1517 he worked for Lorenzo de' Medici and Pope Leo X on the design of fabulous jewelry and gold items that would donated to the French Court. At the heart of this commission was the Perfume Burner designed by the artist for Francis I, as shown in an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi.
The section devoted to jewelry is further enhanced by three extremely famous portraits by Raphael: Young Man With An Apple (Florence, Uffizi), Portrait of a Young Woman (or La Muta, 1507, Urbino, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche) and Portrait of Elisabetta Gonzaga (1504-1505, Florence, Uffizi) wearing a pendant in the shape of a scorpion that is reproduced in the black glass piece on loan from the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum.
The interest of the artist in precious materials and his professional relations with goldsmiths and jewelers is also expressed through a display of engraved rock crystals, cameos and metal plaques crafted by Valerio Belli, who translated Raphael's inventions into glyptics (engraving of gems) and numismatics based on engravings, sharing the same interest and passion for the ancient world with his artist friend. With reference to Antiquity, Raphael and his shop fully grasped the stylistic potential of the "grotesques", launching their revival and paving the way for their success in the framework of the "lesser arts": the exhibition illustrates this passage in the rooms devoted to the Vatican Rooms and the Loggias.
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The exhibition continues with documents attesting to the endless range of materials into which Raphael's genius was translated, closing with the most spectacular section on that lesser art in which the artist was most directly engaged and where his role is particularly close to painting: tapestry.
In 1514 Leo X's commission for the drawing of the cartoons (today at Victoria & Albert Museum in London) for the weaving of the tapestry of the Sistine Chapel was an undertaking almost as ambitious as that for the Vatican Rooms by Julius II: Raphael's contribution to "historic painting" was in some ways even more significant than his frescoes. The workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aelst in Brussels, that weaved the series of the tapestries before 1521, ensured the highest weaving quality and used the most refined colors and gold and silver threads.
The story of Raphael's cartoons, their travels and the many series of tapestries that they inspired in the 16th and 17th centuries is quite adventurous: the exhibition provides the unique opportunity to compare a tapestry from Peter van Aelst's shop (now at the Vatican Museums) with samples of the series that followed. The subject of this unprecedented comparison is the Miraculous Catch Of Fish, thanks to the tapestry that was restored for this purpose by the La Venaria Reale Conservation and Restoration Center. It belongs to the series conserved at the Museo Antico Tesoro of the Santa Casa di Loreto and was woven in Brussels by the tapestry manufacturer Heinrich Mattens between 1520 and 1524, depicting the famous episode from the life of St. Peter.
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Two other tapestries depicting the same episode from the Acts of the Apostles are on display from the set conserved at Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, manufactured in Brussels by Jan van Tieghem and on loan from the Royal Palace of Madrid and exhibited in Italy for the first time. The element that completes this unique exercise in comparison is the last tapestry of the 17th century series conserved at the Palazzo Ducale of Urbino, manufactured by the French Manufacture des Gobelins on a commission from Cardinal Mazarin. After Raphael's preparatory drawings for the Miraculous Catch Of Fish were lost, the genesis of the image can still be traced back using drawings by his pupils Giovan Francesco Penni, Giovan Francesco Penni and Giovanni da Udine, that offer another in- depth focus of this section.
The comparison of the tapestries from different series over the course of two centuries is a unique opportunity for accurate comparative analyses of their style and techniques, particularly concerning the borders. Raphael's cartoons for the tapestries on the Acts of the Apostles, sent to Brussels in 1516, marked a crucial moment for the dissemination of Italian figurative culture in the Flanders. Just as important, however, was the effect of the original cartoons, that have been lost, concerning the borders, where the exclusive use of vegetal patterns was abandoned in favor of a new decorative repertoire in which the main subject were grotesques.
The exhibition is an extraordinary journey in the fascinating world of Raphael and the decorative arts, "to" whom and "by" whom they were inspired. The incredible reproduction and migration of his style and subjects not only allowed for the dissemination of inventions, arts and knowledge, but also ensured the establishment and the affirmation over the centuries of Raphael's fame and myth.
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General Information
Raphael. The Sunshine of the Arts. Rooms of the Arts, Reggia di Venaria From 26 September 2015 to 24 January 2016
Opening times (Exhibition and Reggia): Tuesday to Friday: from 9 to 17
Saturday, Sunday and holidays: from 9 to 19
Monday: closed (except Festivities, same openings times as Sunday, and except Christmas Day 25 December)
Last admission 1 hour before closing time.
Admission Full ticket: 14 euros
Discounted (groups of min.12 people, over 65, categories eligible for free and discounted tickets): 12 euros
Discounted for children and teenagers aged 6 to 20 and university students under 26: 8 euros
Schools (groups of min. 18 students, free admission for 2 teachers every 27 students): 4 euros
Free admission for children under the age of 6 and other eligible categories.
Combo tickets are also available for the Reggia and other exhibitions under way at La Venaria Reale.
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