Raphael at the Met: The Colonna Altarpiece, exclusively at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, reunites the seven panels of the Italian High Renaissance artist's masterwork for the first time since their dispersal in the Seventeenth Century. Exceptional paintings and drawings by Raphael (Raffaelo Sanzio or Santi, 1483-1520) are amply supplemented by those of his noteworthy contemporaries. Assembled together, they describe the poignant moment in the young artist's career when he ventured from his native Urbino to cosmopolitan Florence during a high point in Italy's cultural history.
The first two rooms exhibit works by the prolific Raphael and a number of older Italian artists. The third describes recent scientific studies of the Colonna Altarpiece (ca. 1504-5) and chronicles the ownership of its components. Bringing a magnifying glass for close examination of the drawings on display is highly recommended.
Before being orphaned at 11 years of age, Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi (d. 1494), introduced his son to painting and the intellectually enlightened Humanist court of Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (r. 1444-1482). The Ashmolean Museum's Head of a Youth (ca. 1500-2), almost certainly a self-portrait of Raphael and not included in this exhibition, attests to the self-assured artist's exceptional drafting abilities from a very early age.