Met Museum Hosts First U.S. Retrospective of Italian Renaissance Master

The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened the first comprehensive retrospective of Raphael ever mounted in the United States, bringing together 237 works to trace the full arc of a career that ended with the painter's death at just 37.

"Raphael: Sublime Poetry," which opened March 29 and runs through June 28, 2026, centers on 175 works by Raffaello di Giovanni Santi himself, the majority of which have never been seen on American soil. The exhibition does not travel after its New York run; the fragility of the loans makes a single venue mandatory.

The show was 17 years in the making for its curator, Carmen C. Bambach, the Marica F. and Jan T. Vilcek Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Met, who previously organized the museum's landmark Michelangelo exhibition in 2017. Bambach assembled loans from some of the world's most closely guarded collections, including the Louvre, the Galleria Borghese, the Vatican Museums, the Uffizi, the Prado, the British Museum, and the Albertina, among dozens of other institutions. "If we only look at his paintings, we see this supreme, sublime beauty and perfection," Bambach said. By positioning Raphael's finished canvases alongside his preparatory drawings, including 142 drawings in total, the exhibition reveals the mechanics of that perfection. "They're very intimate. We really seem to be right there looking over his shoulder and seeing him try out things," she said.

The exhibition traces Raffaello di Giovanni Santi's journey from his training in his native city of Urbino, in central Italy, to the papal court in Rome before his death in 1520 at age 37. Highlights include the first painting Raphael completed entirely on his own and tapestries he designed for the Sistine Chapel. Among the most prized loans are the Louvre's Portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione, painted between 1514 and 1516, and the Galleria Borghese's Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn, from around 1505 to 1506. The Borghese also lent La Fornarina, which had not been seen in New York since a brief appearance at the Frick in 2004 and 2005.

Bambach noted that the human figures depicted by Raphael served as "the model for 300 years" for generations of artists. That outsized influence, she argues, ultimately worked against his reputation; the sheer volume of imitations, particularly of his idealized Madonnas, obscured the range and ambition of the original work.

Italian-American actress Isabella Rossellini lends her voice to an audio guide for the exhibition. The guide, which runs approximately 35 minutes, is narrated by Rossellini and features commentary from Bambach alongside research associate Caroline Elenowitz-Hess and art historian Catherine Whistler.

The Met has scheduled two public programs tied to the exhibition: a daylong symposium on April 18 titled "Raphael Up Close: Perspectives on Research," bringing together international art historians and conservators, followed by a May 17 event, "Sunday at The Met: Raphael and His Legacy," featuring presentations from leading scholars. The exhibition is free with museum admission.