Even in a growing streak of high-profile exhibitions, the newest Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) exhibition, Raphael – The Power of Renaissance Imagery: The Dresden Tapestries and Their Impact, stands out.
Though most special exhibitions at the CMA take place in a prominent gallery just past the ticket desk on the first floor, the Raphael tapestries reside up the stairs in a different gallery.
“It is the only place in the entire building that we have enough height to showcase these extraordinarily wonderful tapestries,” says Nannette Maciejunes, CMA executive director and CEO.
Photo by Cameron Carr
Raphael features six tapestries that, while extremely rare, are likely familiar to audiences. The tapestries come from large-scale paintings by the Renaissance master that were also used to create the tapestries hanging in the Sistine Chapel.
Beyond their importance to art history and technical mastery, the pieces are also stunning for their scale. The pieces hang nearly from floor to ceiling in the tall gallery, and Maciejunes says the museum required a special mechanical lift to move the pieces into the gallery. The visual impact of these massive and storied works is stunning.
The exhibition is particularly historic for CMA because of the rare and delicate nature of the works. These tapestries have never before been shown in the United States. The exhibition is a partnership with Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (GAM), the other location for the works to be shown.
“I have to admit, it looks better (in CMA) than it did in Dresden,” says Stephan Koja, director of the GAM.
CMA has previously partnered with the Dresden museum to borrow works for a 1999 exhibition, Ages of Splendor and Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Paintings from the Old Masters Picture Gallery, and the 2018 exhibition Titian’s Lady in White: A Renaissance Mystery.
The tapestries for Raphael were commissioned by the Prince of Wales (later Charles I) for the British royal collection in 1623, more than a century after Raphael completed the compositions in 1515 for a commission by Pope Leo X. The works depict the lives of Saints Peter and Paul.
In addition to the six tapestries, Raphael includes an impressive collection demonstrating the process, context and influence of these works.
“We want to show how highly influential these tapestries were,” Koja says. “They were so convincing in their monumentality that … artists all over Europe and through centuries referred to those.”
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Facsimiles of some of Raphael’s original paintings, created specifically created for Dresden and Columbus, show alongside the resulting tapestries in addition to earlier drafts of his compositions. The show also includes classical works from Dresden’s collection that illustrate his interpretations of antiquity and how artists both in Europe and the U.S. would take inspiration from Raphael and his tapestries.
The exhibition also reveals lesser-known details of the tapestries. The facsimiles of Raphael’s paintings show how the compositions were reversed during the weaving process.
Mortlake Tapestry Manufactory (after designs by Raphael), The Miraculous Draft of Fishes, after 1625.Tapestry, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
Comparing the tapestries, the effects of time and light on the thread is also made clear. The Miraculous Draft of Fishes, one of the most shown works, has lost a significant amount of yellow and green hues in comparison to The Blinding of Elymas, which has spent a greater portion of its lifetime in storage.
The exhibition’s holistic approach is in line with high-profile exhibitions from the last year that centered on work by Vincent Van Gogh and Roy Lichtenstein. Both of those shows considered the context and inspiration behind the artists’ work. Like Raphael, those also brought iconic, rarely seen pieces to CMA.
Those exhibitions, however, stay closer to CMA’s collection, which focuses on predominantly modern and contemporary works. Presenting these centuries old works in Columbus is all the more special because of that fact.
“When we do old masters projects like this,” Maciejunes says, “it’s very special for our audience.
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Mortlake Tapestry Manufactory (after designs by Raphael), Feed My Sheep (Christ's Charge to Peter), after 1625. Tapestry, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
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Ugo da Carpi, The Death of Ananias, surrounded by Apostles, 1518. Chiaroscuro woodcut from three blocks in brown. Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1918
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Peter Paul Rubens, The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek, c. 1626. Oil on panel. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Syma Busiel, 1958.4.1
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Raphael, Eight Apostles, c. 1514. Red chalk over stylus underdrawing and traces of leadpoint on laid paper, cut in two pieces and rejoined; laid down. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Woodner Collection, 1993
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Photo by Cameron Carr
Cameron Carr is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at ccarr@cityscenemediagroup.com.
