Featuring more than eighty works drawn almost exclusively from the Morgan's exceptional collection of Italian drawings, Rome After Raphael illuminates artistic production in Rome from the Renaissance to the beginning of the Baroque—from approximately 1500 to 1600. The exhibition, the first in New York to focus solely on Roman Renaissance and Mannerist drawings, takes Raphael's art as its starting point and ends with the dawn of a new era as seen in the innovations of Annibale Carracci.
The show includes striking examples by great masters of the period, including among others Raphael, Michelangelo, and Parmigianino. Also on exhibit are Giulio Clovio's sumptuous Farnese hours, the Codex Mellon—an architectural treatise on important Roman sites and projects, including Raphael's design for St. Peter's—and a magnificent gilt binding. Having recently undergone a thorough investigation of its technique and media, the Morgan's Raphael school painting, The Holy Family, is on view as well.
Numerous drawings in the exhibition are related to Roman projects and commissions, including elaborate schemes for fresco decorations of city palaces and rural villas, funerary chapels and altarpieces, and tapestry designs and views of newly discovered antiquities. The exhibition opens a window on the past to afford us a glimpse of the artistic sensibility and lavish patronage of the period.
This exhibition is made possible by Christopher Scholz and Inés Elskop in honor of Helen and Janos Scholz.
Raffaellino Motta da Reggio
Italian, Codemondo near Reggio Emilia 1550–1578 Rome
The Apparition of the Angel to St. Joseph, ca. 1576
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over red chalk
15 x 11 1/8 inches (381 x 282 mm)
Inscribed at lower left, in pen and brown ink, Zuchero.
Purchased in honor of Charles E. Pierce, Jr.’s tenure as director by the Visiting Committee to the Department of Drawings and Prints through the generosity of Ildiko Butler, Diane A. Nixon, Andrea Woodner, Hamilton Robinson, Jr., Joan Taub Ades, Clement C. Moore II, Jayne Wrightsman, David M. Tobey, Eugene V. Thaw, George L.K. Frelinghuysen, Seymour and Helen Mae Askin, Catherine G. Curran, Melvin R. Seiden, Hubert and Mireille Goldschmidt, and Wheelock Whitney III; 2007.80