Raphael and His Circle

February 16 – November 15, 2020
West Building, Ground Floor - Galleries 22 and 22A

Raphael, *The Prophets Hosea and Jonah*, c. 1510, pen and brown ink with brown wash over charcoal and blind stylus, heightened with white gouache and squared for transfer with blind stylus and red chalk, on laid paper, National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Armand Hammer Collection, 1991.217.4

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Raphael (1483–1520) was one of the greatest artistic figures working in the Western classical tradition. To mark the 500th anniversary of his death, the Gallery presents 26 prints and drawings in an intimate installation. These works illustrate how Raphael’s art shaped the standard of aesthetic excellence for later artists, connoisseurs, and scholars. The exhibition features four drawings by Raphael: the sheet from which the design of his painting Saint George and the Dragon (c. 1506, National Gallery of Art, Washington) was transferred; the cartoon for the so-called Belle Jardinière (The Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist, 1507, Louvre Museum, Paris); a detailed representation of the prophets Hosea and Jonah, a well-known study for part of the frescoes in the church of Santa Maria della Pace in Rome; and a study of eight apostles for the design of the tapestry Christ’s Charge to Peter (c. 1514, Vatican Museum). Nine drawings by his closest collaborators and followers—Giulio Romano, Polidoro da Caravaggio, and Perino del Vaga—are also on view. The exhibition includes 10 engravings, as well as a chiaroscuro woodcut, by the earliest interpreters of Raphael’s designs: Marcantonio Raimondi and his followers Agostino dei Musi and Marco Dente as well as Ugo da Carpi. The Gallery’s four paintings by Raphael—the largest and most important group outside Europe—represent the central decade of his activity and are permanently displayed on the Main Floor of the West Building.

The exhibition is curated by Jonathan Bober, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art.

Originally scheduled to close on June 14, 2020, the exhibition closed early when the COVID-19 pandemic museum closure began on March 14, 2020. The exhibition re-opened on October 13, 2020, with an extended closing date of November 15, 2020.

Raphael and his Circle

Raphael, Saint George and the Dragon, c. 1506, brush and brown ink heightened with white over black chalk, incised with stylus, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1982.42.1

Drawn with gray chalk lines and smudges against dark tan paper, a woman sits facing to our left on a low wall, with two toddler-aged babies at her feet, filling this vertical drawing. Their bodies are outlined with smoke-gray lines and filled in with paler gray areas, giving the drawing an almost ghostly look against the dark paper. Both children have short hair and rounded, pudgy bodies. The woman has a subtly rounded figure, a straight nose, and smooth cheeks; her bow lips are closed. Her wavy hair is loosely pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck. Her dress, with a scooped neckline, is cinched at the waist before flaring into a voluminous skirt. She smiles down at the nude baby who stands to our left, looking up at her and leaning against her knees with his weight mostly on his right foot. Her left hand holds his left arm, which reaches across her lap toward a book she presses against her side with her left forearm. His right hand touches her left knee, nearest us, and her right hand passes behind him to caress his shoulders. The second child kneels in a crouch near the woman’s legs, to our right. Leaning on a slender staff like a walking stick, he wears a garland of leaves in his hair and looks up toward the other boy. Chalk strokes and white highlights around his torso suggest he is wrapped in drapery. Some details are difficult to make out because some of the charcoal-gray lines are loosely sketched and retraced. The corners and edges of the paper are chipped, revealing an underlying surface to which it is attached, and there are crease lines that suggest that the paper was likely folded in the past.

Raphael and his Circle

Raphael, The Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, c. 1507, black chalk with traces of white chalk, outlines pricked for transfer; laid down, Purchased with funds from The Armand Hammer Foundation, 1986.33.1

Drawn with brown ink and shaded with tan washes on cream-white paper, two bearded men wearing robes, with a smaller, nude, winged boy between them, fill this vertical drawing. At the center top of the paper, the angel faces us, gazing down to our left with open mouth and eyebrows drawn together. He has curly hair and lifts his muscular right arm, on our left, with his index finger pointed upward. Crosshatched lines define his body, and quick, curved lines shade his outstretched wings. To our right, one man stands with his body facing the center of the sheet but he turns his head to look up off the top right corner. He has curling hair, a wide mustache, and perhaps a goatee, though his chin is partially hidden by a dark spot on the paper. He has broad shoulders, a thick neck, large hands, and a hint of a muscular leg under his flowing, voluminous robes. He holds a flat, oblong object, possibly a stone tablet, perched on his slightly bent left knee. Seated to our left, the other man faces and looks at us. He also grasps a flat, tablet-like object but holds it up, braced on his right thigh, to our left, and points to it with his other hand. This man also is solidly built and swathed in robes, with a hood over his curly hair. He leans forward, knees apart, and stares out with his brows deeply furrowed. His downturned mouth is set in a bushy, curly beard. Near the bottom of the picture, the bare feet of the two men emerge from the folds of their robes. Touches of white washes on the folds of the robes create a sense of light coming from above and to our right, and charcoal lines reinforce the shadows. A grid is lightly drawn in red chalk lines over the composition. A black stamp in the lower left has the letters “E.C” and another at the center reads, “H de T. STAT.”

Raphael and his Circle

Raphael, The Prophets Hosea and Jonah, c. 1510, pen and brown ink with brown wash over charcoal and blind stylus, heightened with white gouache and squared for transfer with blind stylus and red chalk, on laid paper, The Armand Hammer Collection, 1991.217.4

Raphael and his Circle

Marcantonio Raimondi, Raphael, The Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1511, engraving, Print Purchase Fund (Rosenwald Collection), 1975.54.1

Raphael and his Circle

Raphael, Eight Apostles, c. 1514, red chalk over stylus underdrawing and traces of leadpoint on laid paper, cut in two pieces and rejoined; laid down, Woodner Collection, 1993.51.2

Printed with black lines on cream-white paper, twenty-four people gather on a hilltop that incongruously curves over a door and door jamb in this horizontal engraving. The men all wear voluminous robes and most have crowns of laurel leaves. The women wear gowns or togas that drape to their feet, and their wavy hair is rolled back, sometimes in a turban-like cloth. At the upper center, a muscular man, Apollo, sits on an earthen mound. His long curling hair falls around one bare shoulder. He strums a lyre with his right hand, on our left. In groups of four or five, men and women stand in conversation or lounge in repose around him. Faint cursive writing, added with pen, above most of their heads identify them. Around a spindly tree in the lower left are

Raphael and his Circle

Marcantonio Raimondi, Raphael, Apollo on Parnassus, 1515/1520, engraving, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1972.31.1

Raphael and his Circle

Polidoro da Caravaggio, A Deathbed Scene [recto], c. 1521/1522, red chalk on laid paper, Gift of David E. Rust, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1991.9.1.a

Raphael and his Circle

Giulio Romano, Saint Michael, c. 1527/1528, pen and brown ink, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1973.5.1

Raphael and his Circle

Perino del Vaga, Alexander Consecrating the Altars for the Twelve Olympian Gods, 1545/1547, pen and brown ink with gray wash over black chalk on laid paper; laid down, Woodner Collection, Gift of Dian Woodner, 2011.42.1

Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Hashtag: #Raphael500

Attendance: 21,778

Raphael and His Circle Virtual Tour