The cultural TV channel Russia-K has broadcast the latest programme in the authorial series by Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky – “Raphael: The 500th Anniversary of His Death”.
Many museums around the world intended to mark 2020 as the Year of Raphael, but the pandemic of the new coronavirus has corrected those plans, turning it into the year of closed doors, empty halls and a decisive shift into online sterility from a reality that ceased to be entirely safe.
Exhibitions have been cancelled, postponed or turned virtual. Raphael has not gone anywhere, though. He remains with us, still that same ideal, unattainable and too sublime to be merely topical, just as he has been for the past five centuries. What is a year to him? His clock always shows one time – eternity. More than that, the year is still not over and the Hermitage, which had planned its anniversary exhibition only for December, still has a chance to be able to present its view of an artist whose beauty was once considered capable of saving the world. And so it does. Take a look at the sad, all-comprehending eyes of the Conestabile Madonna. But there is no need to wait until December. That gaze is already being broadcast around the clock from a web-camera installed in the State Hermitage’s Raphael Hall.
The editor of this programme was Alexei Chachba; the director was Mikhail Trofimov
A recording (in Russian) can be found on the channel’s website:
https://tvkultura.ru/video/show/brand_id/59697/episode_id/2390910
