Urbino was more than just Raphael’s city of birth; it had a profound influence on his development as an artist and remained an essential reference point for him throughout his life. For this reason, the great exhibition of 20 paintings and 19 original drawings on view in the “Palazzo Ducale” (Duke’s Palace) in Urbino seeks to rediscover and celebrate this close bond between Raphael and his home town.
Through examination of Urbino from the late 1470s, the exhibition reconstructs the artistic and cultural background in which Raphael developed and in which his father, Giovanni Santi, a man of letters and court painter to the Duchy of Urbino, ran a rich and flourishing studio and also wrote his famous Cronaca expressing important views on his contemporary painters.
Raphael was born in Urbino in 1483. His father, Giovanni Santi, died in 1494 when the young Raphael was just eleven years old. At that age, boys would normally, at that time, have embarked on an art apprenticeship. When describing Raphael’s artistic training, historians have, until now, based their theories on the account by Vasari, according to which the painter’s father sent him to study at Perugino’s studio at a very young age.
This account, however, seems unrealistic when compared to the actual facts of the future Master’s life. In reality, while still very young, he already had a solid estate and important patrons behind him, and there is no documentary evidence of a direct apprenticeship at Perugino’s studio. Indeed, when his father died, Raphael inherited his studio which he managed with the help of Evangelista da Piandimeleto.
In this advantageous and wealthy position, he would not have needed to work in someone else's studio as an assistant or student, except on specific occasions in order to learn the techniques of well-known artists. The location and size of the studio that Giovanni Santi left to Raphael, his principal heir, is now proven by new documentation.
Giovanni Santi is the key figure in the young Raphael’s artistic development. His cultural influence, however, extended beyond painting since he was a very important person in Urbino’s cultural scene, a courtier and a man of letters. As a result of these links with the noble Montefeltro family of Urbino, the very young Raphael was exposed and profoundly influenced by the immense collection of masterpieces housed in the Duke’s Palace.
It should be remembered that, while the town of Perugia at the end of the fifteenth century was relatively provincial from a cultural point of view (indeed, Perugino, the most sought-after and highest-paid artist of the day who, of course, originated from that area, worked mainly in Florence), Urbino, on the other hand, was a key centre of Renaissance culture and, in Federico da Montefeltro’s time, rivalled Florence with its original “mathematical” approach to the Renaissance.
The Duke’s library housed an extensive collection of Florentine paintings in the form of beautiful miniatures, which Giovanni Santi would certainly have had access to. Indeed, Santi demonstrates thorough knowledge of the manuscripts kept in Duke Federico’s extraordinary library. The theory of a direct relationship between Raphael and his father’s painting is supported primarily by the similarities with Giovanni Santi’s last work, the Tiranni Chapel in the Church of San Domenico in the town of Cagli, arguably his masterpiece.
Palazzo Ducale Website
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