With loans from many of the world’s leading museums, the Met will present Raphael: Sublime Poetry, an exhibition featuring 200 of the most important drawings, paintings and tapestries by the central figure of the Italian Renaissance. Scheduled for display on Fifth Avenue from March 29 to June 28, 2026, the show will spotlight Raphael’s genius and enduring influence.
This will be the first monographic exhibition on Raphael ever held in the United States, exploring the entirety of his life and career. Visitors will trace his journey from Urbino, where his father served as a court painter, through his formative Florentine years when Raphael emerged as a peer of Leonardo and Michelangelo, culminating in his final decade at the papal court in Rome.
Alongside his most celebrated masterpieces, the exhibition will feature rarely seen treasures that reveal the painter’s extraordinary creative power.
“This unprecedented exhibition will offer a groundbreaking look at Raphael’s genius and legacy,” said Max Hollein, Director of the Met, who emphasised the challenges of bringing such a project to fruition.
“Visitors will have an exceptionally rare opportunity to admire his creative range through some of the most iconic and difficult-to-lend works from around the world, many of which have never before been reunited.”
Highlights include the Alba Madonna from the National Gallery of Art, shown alongside preparatory drawings from the Lille Museum, and Raphael’s portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione, now in the Louvre and considered one of the greatest works of the Renaissance.
Major institutions lending to the exhibition include the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, the Galleria Borghese, the Gallerie Nazionali Barberini Corsini, the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, the Pinacoteca di Bologna, the Fondazione Brescia Musei, the Uffizi and the Vatican Museums.
International contributors include the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, the Ashmolean in Oxford, the Prado in Madrid, the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in London.
The exhibition has been seven years in the making. “It was an extraordinary opportunity to redefine my understanding of this monumental artist,” said Carmen Bambach, curator of the Met’s Department of Drawings and Prints, who previously organised exhibitions on Leonardo and Michelangelo.
Organised chronologically, the show will follow Raphael’s career while also including thematic sections on the evolution of his ideas and iconography.
It will incorporate the latest scientific discoveries, with particular focus on his representation of women, from his pioneering use of nude models to his sensitive portrayals of the Madonna and Child.
