2026年4月5日 / 美国东部时间上午10:23 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
世人认为这幅粉笔素描完成时拉斐尔年仅17岁，很可能是一幅自画像。“真正令人惊叹的是他绘画技法的完美无瑕，”策展人卡门·班巴奇说道。
拉斐尔笔下的年轻男子，被认为是艺术家17岁时的自画像。 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
你能从这幅出自少年之手的粉笔素描中窥见未来——拉斐尔将在极短时间内被视为意大利文艺复兴最伟大的艺术家之一，与米开朗基罗和列奥纳多·达·芬奇齐名。“我认为后世有时将他排在第三位，”班巴奇说，“但我相信他应当与前二者并驾齐驱。”
班巴奇耗时八年筹备了美国有史以来首次拉斐尔作品综合特展，总计237件作品。展览刚刚在纽约大都会艺术博物馆开幕。
拉斐尔于1483年出生在乌尔比诺，21岁移居佛罗伦萨后，其早熟的天赋迸发出耀眼光芒。“他遇见了列奥纳多，后者十分推崇艺术家如何让创作灵感在纸面上肆意流淌，”班巴奇说道，“拉斐尔吸收了这一点，突然间，我们看到作品中充满了强烈的动感、戏剧张力与叙事性。他总能精准捕捉任何故事的高潮节点。他无疑是最令人惊叹的叙事大师之一。”
母亲与婴儿之间的人性温情与柔美……他以圣母子为主题的素描与画作，皆是充满美好愿景的动人创作。
拉斐尔（拉斐洛·迪·乔瓦尼·桑蒂），《风景中的圣母子与圣婴施洗约翰（阿尔巴圣母）》，约1509-1511年。布面油画（原绘于木板后转移至画布）。华盛顿特区国家美术馆，安德鲁·W·梅隆收藏
“当时育龄妇女与儿童的死亡率极高，”班巴奇说，“当人们看到这样的圣母形象，看起来健康柔美，还有那些圆胖可爱、让人忍不住想捏一把的圣婴——这仿佛构建了一个理想化的宇宙，完全是人们心中向往的模样。”
这与他的肖像画截然不同，后者栩栩如生地还原了被画者的真实样貌。
拉斐尔为宾多·阿尔托维蒂绘制的肖像。华盛顿特区国家美术馆
宾多·阿尔托维蒂是教皇的银行家之一，也是拉斐尔的友人，这幅肖像捕捉了他的神态、后背的发丝卷须，将性感魅力具象化。“宾多·阿尔托维蒂是我最爱的肖像作品，我一直都很欣赏这个男人，”班巴奇说道。
拉斐尔与人脉广泛的赞助人建立的友谊为他带来了越来越多的委托订单，最终在25岁时他前往罗马梵蒂冈，为教皇的私人办公室和图书馆创作湿壁画。（大都会艺术博物馆的展览以原尺寸四分之三的比例复刻了这些作品。）
他将自己的肖像融入了最著名的作品《雅典学院》，其中也有列奥纳多的形象。一些学者认为，其中一个沉思的人物是米开朗基罗。
《雅典学院》，拉斐尔为教皇尤利乌斯二世创作的湿壁画，创作于1510年至1511年间。艺术家将自己的肖像画在了右侧的人物中。 Bildagentur-online/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
班巴奇表示：“米开朗基罗极度嫉妒拉斐尔。在很多方面，拉斐尔都是米开朗基罗的悲剧，因为他的创作天赋来得太过轻易。”
拉斐尔受邀为巨型挂毯设计图样，这些挂毯原本计划悬挂在米开朗基罗的西斯廷教堂天顶画下方。
谈到艺术家创作的一幅描绘一老一少两位男子的素描时，班巴奇指出：“这是拉斐尔创作过的最精美的素描作品。一个人能够如此精准地还原手指的透视效果，以及手部不同的光影层次，这正是区分最顶尖艺术家与优秀创作者的标准。”
策展人卡门·班巴奇与记者玛莎·泰施纳在大都会艺术博物馆欣赏拉斐尔的《为《基督变容》创作的两位使徒习作》。 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
这幅素描是为《基督变容》创作的，而这幅作品最终成为了他的最后一幅画作。
1520年4月6日，也就是他37岁生日当天，拉斐尔在罗马因发烧去世。他在万神殿的墓碑上刻着这样的铭文：“他在世时，自然畏惧被他超越。他离世后，自然畏惧自己也将消亡。”
更多相关信息：
- 拉斐尔：极致诗意展，纽约大都会艺术博物馆（展至6月28日）
- 展览画册：《拉斐尔：极致诗意》，卡门·C·班巴奇著（大都会艺术博物馆出版），精装版将于4月14日在亚马逊、巴诺书店和Bookshop.org发售
本报道由罗伯特·马斯顿制作。编辑：雷明顿·科普尔
The sublime perfection of Raphael
April 5, 2026 / 10:23 AM EDT / CBS News
Raphael was believed to be 17 when he did this chalk sketch, likely a self-portrait. “What is really extraordinary is the perfection of his technique in drawing,” said curator Carmen Bambach.
Raphael’s drawing of a young man, believed to be a self-portrait when the artist was just 17 years old. CBS News
You can see in this chalk sketch, by a kid, what was coming … how, in an incredibly short time, Raphael would be regarded as one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance, right up there with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. “I think posterity sometimes sees him in third place,” said Bambach. “I believe he is in equal place.”
Bambach spent eight years putting together the first comprehensive exhibition of Raphael’s work ever in the United States – 237 works in total. It has just opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Born in Urbino in 1483, Raphael’s precociousness exploded into brilliance when he moved to Florence at the age of 21. “He encounters Leonardo, who is very interested in, sort of, the way that an artist can let the creative juices flow on the paper,” said Bambach. “Raphael absorbs this, and all of a sudden, we see this tremendous sense of movement, of drama, storytelling. He’s able to pick the climactic point of any story. He’s got to be one of the most amazing storytellers that way.”
The humanity, the tenderness of a mother with her baby … his drawings and paintings of the Madonna and Child are beautiful exercises in wishful thinking.
Raphael (Raffaello di Giovanni Santi), “The Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape (The Alba Madonna),” ca. 1509-11. Oil on canvas (transferred from wood). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Andrew W. Mellon Collection
“Mortality of women of child-bearing age was stratospheric, and the same thing for children,” Bambach said. “When one has Madonnas that look like they’re a beautiful picture of health, these bambini that are plump and delightful – you want to pinch them! – it’s like producing a kind of idealized universe that was entirely aspirational.”
As opposed to his portraits, which look like the real people he painted.
Raphael’s portrait of Bindo Altoviti. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Bindo Altoviti was one of the pope’s bankers, and a friend of Raphael’s, who captured his gaze, the tendrils of hair down his back, the personification of sensuality. “Bindo Altoviti is kind of my favorite portrait in that I have always had a crush on that guy,” said Bambach.
Raphael’s friendships with well-connected patrons led to bigger and bigger commissions, and ultimately to Rome and the Vatican, at the age of 25, to produce frescoes for the pope’s private offices and library. (They are reproduced in the Met show at ¾ size.)
He slipped a likeness of himself into the most famous, “The School of Athens,” and of Leonardo. Some scholars say one brooding figure is Michelangelo.
“The School of Athens,” a fresco by the painter Raphael made for Pope Julius II between 1510 and 1511. The artist painted his own likeness into a figure on the right. Bildagentur-online/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Bambach said, “Michelangelo was intensely envious of Raphael. Raphael was the tragedy that happened to Michelangelo in many ways, because it came so easily to him.”
Raphael was commissioned to create the designs for enormous tapestries meant to hang directly below Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Of the artist’s drawing of an old and young man, Bambach noted, “This is the most beautiful drawing that Raphael ever produced. For somebody to get that foreshortening of the fingers, and the different planes of the hands in a credible way, this is how you tell the greatest artists from somebody who is just good.”
Curator Carmen Bambach and correspondent Martha Teichner with Raphael’s “Studies of Two Apostles for the Transfiguration,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. CBS News
The drawing was for “The Transfiguration,” what would turn out to be his last painting.
On April 6, 1520, his 37th birthday, Raphael died of a fever in Rome. The inscription on his tomb in the Pantheon reads, “While he was alive, Nature feared she would be surpassed by him. When he died, she feared that she would die, too.”
For more info:
- Raphael: Sublime Poetry, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (through June 28)
- Exhibition Catalogue: Raphael: Sublime Poetry by Carmen C. Bambach (Metropolitan Museum of Art), in Hardcover, available April 14 via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org
Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Remington Korper.