16th Century Exhibitions

As the Metropolitan Museum’s Raphael: Sublime Poetry comes to a close it encourages us to recall the National Gallery’s enormously successful Raphael exhibition. Despite Raphael’s short career of just two decades, before his premature death at 37, he established a momentous influence on Western art. The National Gallery’s earlier 2022 exhibition was the first outside of Italy to encompass his complete career across painting, drawing, architecture and even poetry. Unprecedentedly bringing together 89 works from around the world, it was a wonderful illustration of the breadth and depth of Raphael’s skill, creativity and innovation. 

The exhibition allowed the viewer to appreciate Raphael’s remarkable artistic development. His slightly awkward first attempt at the large-scale tondo format in Terranuova Madonna contrasts tellingly with the later masterful Alba Madonna in which the composition of the three figures elegantly echo the circular tondo form. His increasingly dramatic handling of shadow and colour in his Madonna of the Rose further reveals the progression of a great artist coming fully into his own style. 

The National Gallery’s exhibition displayed Raphael’s radical gift for capturing psychological depth. His Baldassare Castiglione captures the sitter’s inviting gaze through his piercing blue eyes and warm expression. The Bindo Altoviti’s half-turned pose has a striking immediacy as it draws the viewer into conversation. Perhaps his most psychologically powerful and influential work, however, is the unforgettable Pope Julius II. The pope’s mournful, solemn expression and introspective gaze were highly unusual for a papal commission, yet as a result, the three-quarter-length format would become the standard for portraits of popes and rulers for generations. Titian, Rembrandt and Ingres all drew heavily on Raphael, a testament to his enduring influence.  

The exhibition also explored Raphael’s’ engagement with his contemporaries. His Study for a Portrait of a Young Woman reveals his close attention to Leonardo’s Mona Lisa while The Madonna of the Pinks offers another clear emulation, or perhaps a deliberate challenge, to Leonardo’s Benois Madonna. In both exhibitions we are powerfully reminded of Raphael’s virtuosity and immense contribution to art history.

Following my review of the National Gallery’s wonderful Raphael exhibition one cannot help but to reflect on the Royal Academy’s disappointing subsequent exhibition, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence c.1504 (2024-2025).  Confined to just three rooms, it focused on the convergence of the three artists around the Palazzo della Signora (now Palazzo Vecchio) in 1504 Florence.  During this year, both Leonardo and Michelangelo were commissioned to paint murals in the same room with the latter’s famous David placed just outside the building. Into this charged atmosphere, a young Raphael arrived in Florence to refine his craft.  

Unfortunately, given its focus on this extraordinary period, the historical context was given scant attention. Florence’s fragile new Republic and the accompanying intense political machinations, marked a period political instability that would soon be overthrown by the 1512 Medici revival. The exhibition briefly referenced the Republic but neglected the ongoing territorial wars - including the Republic’s attempts to recapture Pisa, and Leonardo’s elevation into diplomatic and engineering roles with Cesare Borgia’s attacks on Florence and the creation of a citizen militia. Inclusion of this would have reframed the works and their use as propaganda.

The exhibition mainly excelled in charting Leonardo and Michelangelo’s artistic rivalry. Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari, depicting the 1440 Florentine victory over Milan and Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina showing the fight against Pisa in 1346 were both commissioned for the newly built Sala del Gran Consiglio yet both were left unfinished, surviving only in preparatory drawings. The sketches for the Battle of Anghiari show four captains on horseback in the thick of battle, their faces contorted with fierce intensity. The Battle of Cascina, by contrast, focuses on the body as bathing nude soldiers scramble to dress after an alarm is raised while they bathe in the Arno. The twisting movements of their bodies lends the scene a remarkable vitality and immediacy. The exhibition would have been better elevated by a recreation of the intended Gran Consiglio setting with the drawings facing one another, allowing viewers to imagine these great works in their intended setting.

The exhibition presents Raphael as a student of the two older artists, learning, interacting and copying their work. His Studies for the Trinity of San Severo and Sketches after Leonardo, 1505-06, reproduces Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari in the top left corner. Learning from the greats, His After Michelangelo, David, adjusts David’s hands and feet to smaller, more natural proportions. He similarly borrows the twisting torso of Michelangelo’s Taddei Tondo in his Bridgewater Madonna but reworks the  poses of the Virgin and child to create a more intimate scene.

Overall, despite the worthwhile subject it is let down by the lack of illuminating context to give more body and meaning by elucidating key details of its political-historical context.