Vatican Museums, Uffizi team up to confirm a Raphael is real

The Vatican Museums and the Uffizi Galleries joined forces for the first time on Friday to inaugurate a small exhibit of rarely seen works by two Renaissance masters that confirmed a painting long suspected of being by Raphael was indeed his work.

“Saints Peter and Paul by Raphael and Fra Bartolomeo. An homage to the Patrons of Rome,” marks the first exhibit for the Vatican Museums in over a year, thanks to Covid lockdowns that shuttered galleries at the time that Italy was commemorating Raphael's 500th death anniversary.

The nearly life-sized paintings of Saints Peter and Paul are normally kept outside public view. But they have been restored and are on display for the first time alongside their preparatory sketches.

Bartolomeo finished the painting of St Paul, but due to an artistic crisis, never finished St Peter. The restoration and research done in preparation for the exhibit confirmed that Rap­hael – long believed to have finished his friend’s commission – indeed completed the work, the Vatican Museums’ director, Barbara Jatta, told a press conference Friday alongside her Uffizi counterpart, Eike Schmidt.