Raphael returns to the fore in the Prado. After years relegated from the room 12 by Velazquez, he captures everyone's attention in the temporary rooms of the museum. The Late Rafael shows the final works of the master painted during his last seven years in Rome and reviews the authorship of some of them. The exhibition also examines the participation of his workshop in the commissions of the Urbino’s author.

Although the title of the exhibition refers only to a single artist, the fact is that it includes other names, such as Gianfrancesco Penni or Giulio Romano. Actually, only 24 paintings of the total 74 exhibited pieces -paintings, drawings, cartoons and a tapestry- belong entirely to the genius. The rest of paintings have to share their authorship with his workshop and many paintings are directly attributed to Raphael’s favourite disciples.

The final years of Rafael coincide with his intervention in the Stanze Vaticane and the commissions by Leo X. In those years, the decade of 1510, the hegemony of the artist was absolute, his fame was international and he had numerous commissions. The only way to meet such demand was through his botegga, where all disciples worked under the same signature: the master of Urbino. A signature that surpassed even Michelangelo’s.

Like Warhol's Factory, Raphael was able to take advantage of his name and his position to receive commissions. He could finish with all of them with the help of his disciples. He had more than fifty pupils, but only two of them have managed to overcome the anonymity: Gianfrancesco Penni and Giulio Romano.

The exhibition aims to delineate the boundaries between the paintings executed by Raphael and the fellowship of his disciples. It also discusses about the common and separate development of three personalities: the master, Romano and Penni. An exhibition that is the result of five years of investigation where the curators have tried to distinguish who did what on the exhibited paintings.

According to Paul Joannides and Tom Henry, there have not been many changes in the authorship of the paintings, although they have adjusted the chronology in several pictures. Sometimes the lack of documentation prevented a definite answer, as in the case of The Virgin with the blue headband. "We have not reached a fully satisfactory assignment in that painting and its date of execution is unclear", the curators said in the cataloge; no doubt offer, however, paintings as Santa Cecilia of Bologna or Baldassare Castiglione’s.

The Prado Museum and the Musée du Louvre are the organizers of this project, which involved more than 40 public and private collections. The late Raphael will be on view in Madrid until 16 September. Then, the exhibition will travel to the Louvre.

When the Prado opened its doors in 1819, Rafael was the most important artist of the museum. Now, he recovers his own place thanks to this exhibition. Sol G. Moreno

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