The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will open a landmark exhibition dedicated to Renaissance master Raphael next year. It marks the museum’s latest blockbuster for Italian Renaissance art, following last fall’s landmark “Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350,” which looked at the dawn of the Renaissance, nearly two centuries before Raphael.
Titled “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” and running March 29–June 28, 2026, the exhibition will be the first of its kind ever mounted for Raphael in the United States. (The exhibition will not travel to other venues after its run at the Met.) The retrospective is to be curated by Carmen Bambach, a curator in the museum’s drawings and prints department and the organizer of the Met’s acclaimed Michelangelo exhibition in 2017.
In a statement, Met director Max Hollein said, “This unprecedented exhibition will offer a groundbreaking look at the brilliance and legacy of Raphael, a true titan of the Italian Renaissance. Visitors will have an exceptionally rare opportunity to experience the breathtaking range of his creative genius through some of the artist’s most iconic and seldom loaned works from around the globe—many never before shown together.”
Raphael, who died at 37 in 1520, is considered, along with Michaelangelo and Leonardo, one of the foremost artists of the Italian High Renaissance, particularly through his emphasis on balance and harmony within a composition. Raphael’s career is typically divided into three periods based on where he was living: Urbino, where he was born; Florence, where he was active between 1504 and 1508; and Rome, where he was a court painter to the Papal States until his death. The exhibition, according to a press release, aims to “offer a fresh perspective on this defining figure of the Italian Renaissance … to reveal an extraordinarily creative mind.”
Exploring the entirety of his short but prolific career, the retrospective will bring together 200 works by the artist, including paintings, drawings, tapestries, and decorative artists. The exhibition will be presented mostly chronologically, with thematic sections looking at different kinds of imagery he employed in his art, as well as looking at how he depicted women. The Met will also publish a fully illustrated catalog to accompany the exhibition.
Many of the world’s top museums will loan work to the exhibition, including the Galleria Borghese and Gallerie Nazionali Barberini Corsini in Rome, the British Museum and the National Gallery in London, the Vatican Museums, the Prado in Madrid, the Uffizi in Florence, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, the Albertina in Vienna, the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, and the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia.
Among the important loans that have been secured for “Sublime Poetry” are Portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione (1514–16) from the Louvre, Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn (1505–06) from the Galleria Borghese in Rome, and The Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape (The Alba Madonna), ca. 1509–11, from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as well as preparatory drawings for the latter painting.
In a statement, Bambach said, “The seven year journey of putting together this exhibition has been an extraordinary chance to reframe my understanding of this monumental artist. It is a thrilling opportunity to engage with his unique artistic personality through the visual power, intellectual depth, and tenderness of his imagery.”