Exhibitions

Raphael: Sublime Poetry

New York, United States

The first comprehensive exhibition on Raphael in the United States, bringing together more than 170 works across drawings, paintings, prints, tapestries and rare loans.

Madonna with Child Raphael @Public domain
1 / 2

Image credit

Madonna with Child

Meet the artist

Raphael

The Movement

High Renaissance, Old Masters

ArtLovers Tip

Don’t go looking only for “perfect beauty.” Look for the work behind the grace: the drawing, the decisions, the emotional intelligence. Raphael’s magic is that everything seems effortless — but the longer you look, the more you feel the mind arranging every gesture into visual poetry.

Exhibition Highlights - What you'll see

Experience the first major exhibition of its kind in the United States with Raphael: Sublime Poetry. We’ve brought together more than 200 of the artist’s most legendary masterpieces alongside hidden gems that are rarely seen by the public, all to celebrate the spark of Raphael’s incredible imagination.

Get an up-close look at the work of one of history’s most beloved artists. Known simply as Raphael, Raffaello di Giovanni Santi (1483–1520) was a true superstar of the Italian Renaissance. He had a unique gift for balancing big ideas with deep emotions—a talent that helped him navigate the high-stakes world of royal courts. Even though he lived for only 37 years, his brilliant work as a painter, designer, and architect set the gold standard for beauty and perfection for centuries to come.

Raphael: Sublime Poetry follows the full arc of Raphael’s career: from Urbino to Florence, and then to Rome, where he became one of the defining artists of the papal court.

You’re watching:

  • Drawings that reveal Raphael thinking through line, movement and composition
  • Paintings where tenderness and structure feel perfectly balanced
  • Madonnas, portraits and female figures shaped by extraordinary psychological softness
  • Prints and tapestries showing how Raphael’s visual language travelled beyond the painted panel
  • Rare works brought together to show the scale of his invention
  • New research and technical discoveries that help illuminate how he worked.

The exhibition asks you to see Raphael not as a cold symbol of “perfection,” but as an artist of emotion, rhythm and imagination — someone who made composition feel like poetry.

Worth the trip

This matters because Raphael is often placed inside art history as “the perfect Renaissance artist,” but this exhibition makes that perfection feel alive again. His work is not only technically brilliant; it is emotionally precise. Faces, gestures, bodies, mothers, saints and thinkers are arranged with a calm that still feels powerful five centuries later.

The Met presents this as the first comprehensive Raphael exhibition in the United States, with major international loans and rarely seen works. For anyone interested in Renaissance art, drawing, beauty, or the foundations of Western painting, this is not just another museum show — it is a once-in-a-generation encounter.

How to experience it

Start with the drawings: they show the intelligence behind the beauty.

Look at hands, glances and body positions — Raphael’s emotion is often quiet.

Don’t rush the Madonnas; their power is in tenderness and structure at once.

Notice how poetry enters the paintings: rhythm, balance, softness, pause.

Compare Raphael with Leonardo and Michelangelo in your mind, but let him stand on his own: less dramatic, perhaps, but deeply human.

New York, United States

Discover the destination

Experience art in New York

United States

New York is the art city that never asks permission — museums, galleries, artists, collectors, fairs and street energy all moving at the speed of now.

Explore New York

Because you are an artlover,

Join our community of art enthusiasts and discover exhibitions, artists, and masterpieces tailored to your tastes. Get personalized recommendations and never miss a must-see show again.

Join us