Raphael: The Drawings at the Ashmolean, Oxford until 3 September 2017

The Heads and Hands of Two Apostles (detail), c. 1519-20 © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

The Exhibition, based on a research project “Raphael and the Eloquence of Drawing”, brings together 120 of Raphael’s drawings, demonstrating his outstanding technical and expressive mastery in ink, pencil and chalks.

“His drawing is eloquent in two senses: in a rhetorical sense definitely, but also as an index of a physical action on the part of the artist — the speed, the pressure of his hand, sometimes tentative, sometimes incredibly assured.”  Dr. Ben Thomas, co-curator.

Studies for the Figure of Christ, c. 1507

© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483 – 1520), known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect.  Together with his two great rivals, Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he is considered one of the 3 great masters of the High Renaissance.  Despite his early death at 37, he created a large body of works, including the fresco-ed Raphael Rooms of  the Vatican, the best known of which – and long seen as Raphael’s masterpiece – is The School of Athens, 1509/1511, representing ‘Philosophy’, including images of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

Raphael: The Drawings at the Ashmolean until 3 September 2017

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