The Afterlife of Raphael's Paintings

Raphael is one of the rare artists who have never gone out of fashion. Acclaimed during his lifetime, he was imitated by contemporaries and served as a model for painters through the nineteenth century. His works have continuously been subject to care, conservation, and restoration, and here Hoeniger focuses on the legacy of Raphael's art: the historical trajectory - or 'afterlife' - of the paintings themselves. Appreciation of Raphael was expressed and the restoration of his works debated in contemporary treatises, providing a backdrop for probing the fortune of his paintings. What happened to his panel-paintings and frescoes in the centuries after his death in 1520? Some were lost altogether; others damaged in natural disasters; and many were affected by uncontrolled climatic conditions, by travel from one place to another, and by the not always careful hands of restorers. This book reveals the five-hundred-year story of many of Raphael's most well-known paintings.