Really SEEING Raphael’s “Madonna di Foligno”

The Madonna di Foligno (1512)

This past winter, Raphael’s Madonna di Foligno (1512) returned “home” to Foligno for a week, attracting thousands of visitors. She’s now back in the Vatican Museum where she’s enchanted visitors since the early 19th century. A copy of the Raphael masterpiece is on view in Foligno’s Palazzo Trinci and nearby is a resin copy made expressly for “non-vedenti” (literally, “those who cannot see”) so that they, too, can finally “see” Raphael’s masterpiece – if tactiley.

And after your visit to Palazzo Trinci, take time also to visit il Monastero di Sant’Anna, once home of the Raphael masterpiece. The monastero (“convent”) still houses an array of treasures from 13th-century maiolica pottery once used by the nuns to a fascinating 15th-century fresco depicting 12 prophets around a Crucifixion (rather than the Twelve Apostles). Why? There was an active Jewish synagogue in Foligno at the time and the fresco was an ecumenical gesture on the part of Franciscan nuns.

Read about France’s 18th-c theft of Raphael’s Madonna (though in 1797, not in 1799).

Read more about Italian museums’ exhibits for the blind.

Revel in Raphael’s “Madonna di Foligno”