Beauty treatments to Raphael’s “La Muta” before her return to Urbino
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- Raffaello, Portrait of a young lady (La Muta), 1507.
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- “La Muta” during the cleaning.
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- “La Muta”, restoration’s detail after the cleaning.
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- “La Musta”, Ultraviolet rays shows the results of the cleaning of the non original varnish,
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- “La Muta”, restoration’s detail.
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- “La Muta” during the restoration.
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- “La Musta” under restoration at the Opificio dele Pietre Dure, Florence.
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- “La Muta” under X rays before and after the holes in the wood were filled.
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- “La Muta” restauration detail after the cleaning.
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- “La Muta” after the cleaning.
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- Raffaello Sanzio, Portrait of a young man with an apple, 1504. Uffizi.
The troubled young woman painted in 1507 by Raffaello Sanzio – apparently Maria Feltria della Rovere, widow of Venanzio Varano, who got married to her when he was only 13 years old and was then assassinated by Cesare Borgia – is currently having beauty treatments at the Fortezza da Basso, in Florence. The Opificio delle Pietre Dure‘s specialists are taking care of her delicate skin, stressed by the long stay she had in spring 2013 in Japan, where she was one of the brightest stars of the great exhibition kindly dedicated by the Tokyo’s National Museum of Western Art to Raffaello.
According to the article published a few days ago on the Facebook Page of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche – which still doesn’t have an appropriate web site, even if the city of Urbino had run to become the European Capital of Culture in 2019 – the lady is also having non-invasive analysis that will reveal more about the materials and their current state of preservation.
The pictorial surface is getting cleaned from the old varnish, turned yellow by the time, and from some altered retouching. A Computerized Axial Tomography scan will also tell about the state of its wooden support, attached during the XIX century by woodworm.
Only then Maria’s resigned hands will be ready to relate for many more years ahead about the son she had from her first baby-husband, and her secret love for Giovanni Andrea Bravo da Verona, the favorite knight of Maria’s uncle, the duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro. If the fascinating identification of “La Muta” proposed by art historian Enzo Gualazzi in 1984 is correct, the letter she holds in her hands may be read as the omen of the assassination of Giovanni a few days after the painting was completed. If this is the case, then it’s good to know that killer was one of Maria’s five brothers, Francesco Maria della Rovere, only 17 years old at that time. In 1504 Raffaello had already portrayed Francesco. The painting is currently preserved at the Uffizi.
November 25, 2020
