How Raphael Made—and Unmade—the Renaissance

Ben Davis· Guest0:00

[background music] Leonardo is the brain. His work is very heady, obviously. Michelangelo is the heart. His work is very emotional and dramatic. And Raphael, I think it's fair to say, is the face. I mean, he is Mr. Suave.

Kate Brown· Host0:17

I'm Kate Brown, and this is The Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News. Raphael is one of those names that everyone knows. He's the prince of painters, a master of the High Renaissance, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has given him the full blockbuster treatment. Their highly anticipated exhibition called Raphael: Sublime Poetry opened in March and is on view until this June. The show is the first comprehensive international loan exhibition ever dedicated to him in the United States, and there are 237 works of art in total, 33 paintings, 142 drawings, and his Sistine Chapel tapestries. There's loans from the Louvre, the Vatican Museum, the Prado, the Uffizi, and the British Museum. And many of these works, according to the Met, have never been shown together, and some have never previously left Europe. It took 17 years to assemble this show. So no one quite captured divine beauty like Raphael did, but what is the story within the story of this artist who left such an indelible mark on Western art? I'm joined by art critic and podcast co-host Ben Davis, who's just published a review of the exhibition to