2023-09-17 13:41:58
A probable work by Raphael discovered. This is an unpublished painting that depicts Mary Magdalene in the guise of Chiara Fancelli, Perugino’s wife. The curators of the International Conference ‘Ideal beauty’ explain it to time.news. Raffaello Sanzio’s vision of perfection’, which took place yesterday afternoon at the Teatro Angel dal Foco in Pergola (Pesaro-Urbino) and where the news was announced. The discovery comes after a scientific study carried out with the Ascoli Piceno branch of the University of Camerino, which provided the data, interpreted by the scholar Jean-Charles Pomerol, professor emeritus of the Sorbonne in Paris, and by other international experts.
The results of the investigation, the result of Italian-French research, will be published in the next issue of the scientific journal ‘Open Science – Arte and Science’ with the title ‘Raphael’s Magdalene or when the pupil surpasses the Master’. During yesterday’s conference, an international award in honor of Leonardo da Vinci was also awarded to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi for the Cultural Research section. Taking part in this journey to discover the art and iconography of the Magdalene were Mother Maria Cecilia Visentin, a pontifical professor specializing in religious iconography of the order of the Servants of Mary, Annalisa Di Maria, one of the leading international experts on Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian Renaissance, specialized in the Neoplatonic current. Professor Pomerol and Andrea da Montefeltro, researcher and sculptor, winner of the World Peace Prize in Art, spoke in the scientific part.
The work attributed to Raphael and dated to the early 1500s is made in oil on poplar wood and represents a supreme artistic achievement of the Italian Renaissance. There is a version of this painting preserved in the Palatine Gallery, authenticated as being by the hand of Perugino, another in Villa Borghese, as being by the workshop. Raphael’s version, according to experts, “is far superior, both from a stylistic and technical point of view, compared to Perugino’s. The grace and harmony of the composition bring the model to life, similar to Leonardo’s works da Vinci, who knew how to represent the being and its soul; the influence of the Tuscan genius is very evident and can be felt in the use and mastery of the present nuance”.
Laboratory investigations made it possible to highlight the use of the dusting technique, which was used to transfer the preparatory drawing. On the support of the pictorial composition, repentimenti were also highlighted, which represent important clues for recognizing the original version from that of apprentices and workshop students. The preparatory and pictorial layers take us back to the construction phases of Raphael’s hand. Furthermore, the discovery would attest that Raphael’s work is the first original version, that is, the first that served as a model for the other versions.
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