Verklärung Christi

Raphael was working on this altarpiece when he died in 1520, at just 37, and it was still on his easel, not quite finished. A cardinal, Giulio de' Medici, had commissioned it years earlier for a cathedral in France, and he ended up keeping it in Rome instead. Raphael did something bold with the story. He stacked two moments on top of each other. Above, Christ rises into light on the mountain, robes glowing, floating free of the ground with two prophets beside him. Below, in shadow and confusion, the apostles fail to heal a boy having a fit, his eyes rolled back, the crowd pointing and arguing. The calm miracle up top, the human mess down below, joined in one frame. A cleaning in the 1970s showed that Raphael painted almost all of it himself, with assistants finishing only a few figures in the lower left. For centuries afterwards people called it the most famous painting in the world.