After Raphael. 1520-2020

Since 2018 there has been an important 3-year cultural partnership agreement in place between Intesa Sanpaolo – Gallerie d’Italia and the State Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg, which has enabled sponsorship of a remarkable exhibition dedicated to Raphael, to mark the 500th anniversary of his death: After Raphael. 1520-2020.

The exhibition, staged in the state rooms of the Winter Palace from 10 December 2020 to 28 March 2021, celebrates the legendary Raphael and the art of “harmony”, from the Renaissance up to the present day. Harmony, decorum, and balance are indeed the constant characteristics of this Urbino-born maestro’s works, which have dominated the European art scene for five centuries: Mannerists and Academic Artists, the Caravaggisti and the Baroque, Romantic and Modernist maestros have all looked at art through the lens of Raphael. And it is through this lens that curators Zoya Vladimirovna Kuptsova and Vasily Mikhailovich Uspensky have scrutinised all the masterpieces on display.

With After Raphael. 1520-2020, the State Hermitage Museum is exhibiting more than 300 works (including dozens of paintings now on display to the public for the first time). The exhibition opens with some of the artist’s works and 8 monumental frescoes by the School of Raphael (following the restoration project initiated in 2015), followed by masterpieces from Giulio Romano, Parmigianino, Poussin, Rubens, Mengs, Ivanov, Venetsianov, Ingres, Corot, and Picasso, right up to artists of our own time. This artistic journey is presented metaphorically by the Hermitage as a line, “Raphael’s Line” which begins with the works of the maestro and continues still today, thanks to his followers who have guaranteed artistic continuity over the centuries. With this important inheritance, the exhibition maintains a dialogue through a comparison between the past and variables in modern art, highlighting the persistence (but also re-interpretation) of the referential aesthetic model.

The exhibition, with Intesa Sanpaolo and Banca Intesa Russia as Exhibition Sponsors, has been organised by the Hermitage, in collaboration with the British Museum, Albertina, National Gallery of London, State Russian Museum, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art, Tretyakov Gallery, Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Preserve, Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts, Collection of Icons sponsored by Saint Andrew the First-Called Foundation, and private collections.