RAFFAELLO. FROM FLORENCE TO ROME

In the collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, Raphael’s work represents a paradigm. Like a true talent spotter, Borghese collected Raphael’s paintings from his earliest days to the time the painter arrived in Rome, where he became a universal model of art for centuries to come.

The centrepiece from this period in the artist’s development is the famous Deposition, a seminal work that marks a turning point towards that revolution in concept, space and composition that is exemplified by the Vatican Rooms. The work’s significance was very clear to the cardinal, and no obstacles were great enough to stop him from possessing it.

Scipione Borghese boasted of owning numerous paintings by Sanzio, at a time when owning even a single work by the artist was considered a significant sign of a collection’s quality. With prestigious loans from major museums around the world, the exhibition reconstructs the ancient collection of Raphael’s paintings in the Borghese collection, also extending the research to those paintings once believed to be by Raphael but today recognised as the work of different authors.

The Deposition on wood panel is key to the exhibition. Its reconstruction is proposed here in the complete original, with the frame including the predella and cymatium. Centred around the work was the historical research that brought together preparatory drawings showing the complex genesis of the altarpiece through the gradual and total transformation of the initial idea.

Diagnostic investigations conducted in previous years are crucial to the history of the painting, and reveal major changes made to the composition in progress, bearing witness to the great artist’s profound thought process at a crucial moment in his career.

The exhibition catalogue, curated by Anna Coliva, is published by Skira.