Vatican Museums, Uffizi team up to confirm a Raphael is real

VATICAN CITY — Two of the world’s most important art museums, the Vatican Museums and the Uffizi Galleries, joined forces for the first time on Friday to inaugurate a small exhibit of rarely seen works by two Renaissance masters that confirmed a painting long suspected of being by Raphael was indeed his work. An homage to the Patrons of Rome,” marks the first exhibit for the Vatican Museums in over a year thanks to COVID-19 lockdowns that shuttered galleries precisely at the time that Italy was commemorating the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death with a series of shows. The restoration and research done in preparation for the exhibit confirmed that Raphael - long believed to have finished his friend’s commission - indeed completed the work, the Vatican Museums’ director, Barbara Jatta, told a press conference Friday alongside her Uffizi counterpart, Eike Schmidt. While the Uffizi and Vatican Museums often exchange pieces for special exhibits, Schmidt and Jatta said this was the first time the two institutions had joined up to mount a show and catalogue together, with each museum restoring and offering new research into the pieces being exhibited and drawing on their respective patron groups to fund it.