Exhibition
On View
Nov 12, 1983–Jan 22, 1984

Exhibition celebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of Raphael, one of the central masters of hte Italian Renaissance.

Partially supported by grants from National Endowment for the Arts, an agency of the Federal Government, and the Illinois Arts Council.

Further thanks to the Miller Committee at the University of Illinois and the Program in Art History for their assistance in the presentation of the series: The Legacy of Raphael: Lectures in Art and Morality.

While the works included in this exhibition were not created by Raphael's hand, this large assemblage of engravings nd small sculpture reflect the face and spirit of his art. The exhibition is a study in influences and relationships, describing Raphael's debt to the classical tradition as he encountered it in the remains of ancient Rome, in the literature of antiquity, and in the conversation of his friends. And it reveals the transformation and synthesis that conjoined this heritage with the contemporary concerns of life and art in the works of Raphael and his circle and, indeed, in the production of artists in subsequent generations. We hope to evoke the memory of an era in the history of art whose richness and variety have remained to this day a source of inspiration and study.

In the preparation of this exhibition we have been fortunate in receiving the enthusiastic and generous assistance of many colleagues and friends. We would like to express particular gratitude to: Paul Barolsky and Richard Betts for their perceptive essays in the exhibition catalogue, Robert Rosenthal, Curator of Special Collections at the University of Chicago Library, for his generous loans from teh Lafreri collection; John Kevin Newman for his elegant translations, Raymond Perlman for design of the exhibition publication; Museum staff members Mark Johnson, Margaret Sullivan, Kathleen Jones, Pamela Cooper, Leslie Colbert Baker, David Shutt, Susan Calza and Catherine Anderson for their untiring assistance with the many complex details of preparing the exhibitions.

Finally, we wish to express our warmest appreciation to the lenders to this exhibition, including:

Richard-Raymond Alasko, Charles Dent, Heinz Schneider, Leo Steinberg, Henri Zerner

Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina

Davison Art Center, Weslyan University

M. H. De Young Memorial Museum

Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute

National Gallery of Art

Special Collections, University of Chicago Library

Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas

Art Institute of Chicago

Cleveland Museum of Art

Detroit Institute of the Arts

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Newberry Library

New York Public Library

St. Louis Art Museum

Toledo Museum of Art

University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara

Vassar College Art Gallery

Yale University Art Gallery

 

 

Co-curators: Philipp Fehl and Stephen Prokopoff