Largest-ever show of Raphael’s work already setting records

Rome’s landmark homage to the master painter and architect Raphael is scheduled to open after six more weeks, but it’s already setting records for ticket sales.

Organizers of the exhibit for the Renaissance maestro that will be hosted at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome told Xinhua they sold 10,000 tickets in the first 48 hours on sale — more than any exhibit ever hosted at the facility.

The event is being organized to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the death of Raphael, who was 37 years old when he died on April 6, 1520. The grand opening of the exhibition will take place just over a month before the actual anniversary — on March 5 — and will run through June 2.

With more than 100 of Raphael’s works on display, including artwork on loan from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the National Gallery London, Paris’ Louvre Museum, and the Prado Museum in Madrid, the exhibit will represent the largest and most varied collection of the artist’s work ever collected in one place.

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“This is an enormous and very important undertaking,” Antonio Forcellino, author of multiple books about both Raphael and the Renaissance, said in an interview.

“Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci are probably the best-known figures of the Renaissance, but Raphael is probably the greatest painter of the era.”

Silvia Ginzburg, an art history professor at Roma Tre University, echoed that point.

“Raphael was different than the other masters, who rose from humble circumstances,” said Ginzburg, who curated a smaller, just-concluded exhibit about Raphael hosted in Urbino, the central Italian city where Raphael was born in 1483.