Raphael’s genius, and the future of museums, on display in Rome
As museums reopen, fewer people will be able to see their treasures
POINTING TO where visitors will be required to step onto a disinfectant mat at the entrance, Mario De Simoni says: “We expect a lot of discipline.” Mr De Simoni is president of the Scuderie del Quirinale, a venue in Rome for big cultural events, which on June 2nd inaugurates the first major art exhibition to open since covid-19 shut galleries and museums around the world. A celebration of the Renaissance master Raphael, to coincide with the 500th anniversary of his death, the show aims to burnish the reputation of an artist once seen as greater even than Leonardo or Michelangelo. But it will also be a test of how art can be displayed in an era of social distancing.
Visitors will be admitted in groups of six every five minutes, and the aim will be to keep them two metres apart throughout. In Italy, the legally required separation is only one metre. But, says Mr De Simoni, since people will be moving around, a safety margin is advisable. The Duomo (cathedral) in Florence has opted for necklaces that flash and vibrate if the wearer gets too close to another visitor. But the Scuderie rejected them as unacceptably intrusive.
Instead, attendants will accompany, and supervise, the parties of six on their journeys through the show. As they arrive in each space, visitors will be expected to take up positions marked on the floor, and that is where difficulties could arise. Will a scholar wanting time to examine, say, the so-called Tempi Madonna and its cartoon—displayed together here for the first time—have to move on after a brief inspection? The attendants are going to need abundant tact.
Playfully entitled Raffaello 1520-1483, the exhibition begins with its subject’s early death at the age of 37 and ends with his earliest known work. The first exhibit is a replica of his tomb in the Pantheon. The last is a page containing an exquisite drawing the 14-year-old Raffaello Sanzio made of his hand, and what is probably a self-portrait.
The curators’ aim has been to show how Raphael generated his distinctive style by a process of absorption. “He was able to fuse influences from other painters in a way very few artists have managed to do,” says Eike Schmidt, the director of the Uffizi, a gallery in Florence, which contributed about a quarter of the works on display (and will open its own doors on June 3rd). Mr Schmidt loaned about a quarter of the works on display, including Raphael’s portrait of his papal patron, Leo X—a decision that prompted the resignation of the Uffizi’s entire scientific committee. Its members considered the painting too fragile to move.
Raphael’s artistic alchemy mingled the emotion in Leonardo’s exchanged glances, the athleticism of Michelangelo’s muscular nudes and the softness of Perugino’s Madonnas to create an oeuvre that, until late in the 19th century, was widely seen as greater than that of his High Renaissance contemporaries. It was only with the advent of, first, Impressionism and, subsequently, the 20th-century avant-gardes that Raphael’s mastery of representational technique began to be appreciated a tad less. This show, open until August 30th, demonstrates how that mastery still has the power to astound. Raphael was the Mozart of art, capable at the age of 22 or less of producing a work as mature and accomplished as his Young Woman with Unicorn.
Far fewer people will get to see this revealing exhibition than if the pandemic had not struck. Unless the Scuderie extends its hours (and that is under consideration), it will accommodate 800-900 visitors a day. The Scuderie’s Caravaggio show in 2010 clocked up almost 6,000.
That raises the question of how galleries and museums can survive financially on severely restricted numbers. The publicly owned Scuderie has large reserves, but Mr De Simoni admits others may respond with sharply increased entrance charges. In the covid-19 world, art, like air travel, could once more become a privilege of wealth.
