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Reconsidering Raphael’s Father

Reconsidering Raphael’s Father

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If you’re visiting Rome, this is a ‘must see.’ Here’s the NYTimes with the report:

Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, was described by Vasari as “pittore non molto eccellente” — not a very good painter — and generations of art historians have tended to presume therefore that he had little influence on his son. “Raphael and Urbino” goes a long way to overturning this assumption by juxtaposing works by father and son, putting them in the wider context of the city’s culture and drawing on 672 contemporary documents, the vast majority of them previously unknown, and 136 of which refer directly to Raphael himself. These new insights will surely also have implications for the interpretation of elements in Raphael’s mature works, both intellectual and artistic. This reassessment of Giovanni Santi and the young Raphael was stimulated by two recent exhibitions: “Raphael: From Urbino to Rome” in London in 2004 and “Raphael: From Florence to Rome” in Rome in 2006. – from NYTimes