In the 1930s, a detailed X-ray analysis of the painting was performed, and the unicorn was discovered and restored. Then, in the 1950s, decades after all traces of St. Catherine’s disguise had been removed from the portrait, further radiographic analysis of the painting’s hidden layers revealed what appeared to be an even deeper truth. It is said that Raphael himself applied an early filter to the painting to hide what he had originally intended to place on the young woman’s lap. namely, a small floppy-eared pet dog, a stock symbol of marital loyalty that animates paintings from Jan. From Van Eyck’s Portrait of Arnolfini (1434) to Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538).
palimpsest
For the past 70 years, painting has been understood as a complex web of meanings, as much about what is not there as what is there. As a result, the work became a harrowing reminiscence of forced feminine ideals, as the subject matter changed appropriately, from faithful wife to immortal virgin to divine saint. Whether or not there really was a pet dog under the unicorn (the exhibition’s curators think otherwise), there is little doubt about the power of one of the more than 170 paintings, drawings, and tapestries assembled for Raphael’s whimsical masterpiece, Raphael: Sublime Poetry.
Unpacking reveals alternating hidden and restored layers of Raphael’s arresting portraits, documenting the evolving ideals and demands of femininity set by master male painters and patrons. This restless image speaks with surprising urgency to our own age’s obsession with carefully curated identities, how we forge, refine, and falsify who we are and who we say we are, simultaneously preserving and erasing ourselves in an avalanche of filtered selfies and fabricated identities. Never before have we been so technologically able to record and store what we look like, but also never have we been so self-conscious about who we really are.
“Raphael: Sublime Poetry” will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until June 28.
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Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
