by Jon Lackman | 30 April 2009 | Museums, Renaissance
Contra Vasari, Perugino and Florence weren’t the sole significant influences on the young Raphael. The artist’s father, Giovanni Santi, as well the Montefeltro court, had a positive impact too; so argues an exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino. The exhibition presents research partly based on documents from the Santi family bottega newly uncovered in the Urbino state archives, where they had apparently lain undisturbed since 1829.
The organizers are not shy about staking their claim:
It should be remembered that, while the town of Perugia at the end of the fifteenth century was relatively provincial from a cultural point of view (indeed, Perugino, the most sought-after and highest-paid artist of the day who, of course, originated from that area, worked mainly in Florence), Urbino, on the other hand, was a key centre of Renaissance culture and, in Federico da Montefeltro’s time, rivalled Florence with its original “mathematical” approach to the Renaissance.
See reviews by Goffredo Silvestri and a slide show in La Repubblica, Rachel Spence in the FT, Francesco Rapaccioni at teatro.org, and interviews with Henning Klüver of Deutschlandradio.
The exhibition follows Raphael: From Urbino To Rome (London, 2004; reviews 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; images), as well as ones in Umbria and Rome (2006).
The catalog, with a number of contributors including Kim Butler Wingfield, is published by Electa.
