MADRID, SPAIN.-The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza presents Contexts of the Permanent Collection 17, devoted to Raphael, one of the key figures of the Italian Renaissance. Portrait of a Young Man (1518-1519) is the starting-point for a consideration of the complex question of authorship surrounding works produced by the artist in the last years of his life.

Raffaello Sanzio (Urbino, 1483-Rome, 1520) arrived in Rome from Florence, probably in the autumn of 1508. According to Giorgio Vasari (1550), the young artist was summoned to the court of Pope Julius II (1503-1513) on the recommendation of Bramante, also from Urbino and at that point in charge of the works on Saint Peter's. Once in Rome, Raphael was immediately contracted to take part in the decoration of the Pope's private apartments, located in the north wing of the Vatican complex. He began work on the room known as the Stanza della Segnatura. His astonishingly innovative style, allied to his unprecedented approach to narration was such that the decorations realised shortly before by other artists were destroyed and the entire project awarded to Raphael. The preparation and execution of the frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura lasted for three years, from 1508 to 1511. They were followed by the Stanza d'Eliodoro (1511-1514), dell'Incendio (1514-1517) and di Constantino, the latter painted by Raphael's pupils between 1520 and 1524 after his death. The brilliant results of the artist's work in the Vatican, combined with the success of his portraits and devotional works, increased his already established fame and reputation and resulted in still more commissions. These circumstances obliged Raphael to organise a studio in which his assistants and collaborators were able to meet this excessive volume of commissions and requests.

Among Raphael's best pupils were Giulio Romano and Giovan Francesco Penni. They inherited his working materials, particularly his drawings and preparatory cartoons for projects already underway, as well as those not started at the time of Raphael's death. The participation of these collaborators became increasingly evident from around 1514, particularly in the Stanza dell'Incendio. Their contribution, however, remains the subject of debate and is difficult to define with any precision, particularly in the period between 1516 and 1520, the focus of the present exhibition. During these years Raphael was directly responsible for the creative process behind each work, and for which his preparatory drawings played a crucial role. These increased considerably in number and were used from the initial idea to the finished work by his assistants who were entrusted with creating the final paintings. For his part, Raphael oversaw every phase of the work, from the earliest and most basic to the most complex and delicate, although at times entrusting some parts to his collaborators.

The exhibition Raphael. Portrait of a young Man brings together a group of paintings and drawings associated with a number of the last major works by the artist. These reveal the close links that Raphael established with his assistants, as well as certain characteristics of his working methods. This is the case with the portraits on panel from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (cat. 1) and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg (cat. 2), as well as the design in the Teylers Museum (cat. 14). The sitters are presented with their head turned in relation to the body, a compositional formula which Raphael borrowed from Leonardo and developed in an extremely original manner, using it in a significant number of paintings and sketches, as the present exhibition makes clear. This pose, with slight nuances, reappears in the pair of drawings (cats. 3 and 4) of around 1514-1516 from the Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Both these red crayon drawings have been related to a room in the Vatican known as the Palafrenieri, which Raphael designed with figures of the Apostles in chiaroscuro. For the Villa Farnesina, a place of leisure built for the banker Agostino Chigi, Raphael's studio executed a number of works including the decoration of the ceiling of the loggia which opened onto the garden, painted with the Story of Psyche (1517-1518). Three drawings relating to this project have been attributed two to Raphael and one to Giulio Romano (cats. 5, 6 and 7). The compositional format found in these three drawings reappears again in the Bust of an Angel (cat. 12), associated with the Stanza di Constantino.

The interesting drawing of The Virgin and Child (Musée du Louvre, cat. 8) satisfactorily resolves a composition which was subsequently realised in oil by Giulio Romano (cat. 9) with the addition of the Infant Saint John the Baptist in one corner. The exhibition also includes a marvellous study by Raphael (cat. 10) for the principal group in the Holy Family of François I (Musée du Louvre), a work which may also have involved the hand of Giulio Romano and other assistants. Raphael's preparatory drawing is a particularly good example of the artist's involvement in the creative process and the way in which his ideas were transposed. The Virgin of the Rose (cat. 13) was one of Raphael's most copied works. It once again uses a turning, inclined pose for the Virgin's figure in a fresh and natural manner. This pose was taken up, albeit more frontally, by Giulio Romano in his Hertz Madonna (cat. 11).