X-RATED RAPHAEL-PICASSO EXPLORES A RENAISSANCE LOVE AFFAIR
September 18th at 6pm
Italian Cultural Institute
500 N Michigan Ave
Suite 1450
The romantic and erotic tale of the painter Raphael and his mysterious Roman mistress–known to posterity as “La Fornarina,” The Baker’s Daughter– is one of the most intriguing stories to come down to us from the Italian Renaissance. In 1967, at the astonishing age of 87, Picasso produced a suite of 25 etchings in which he imagined– and expressed in rapturously sexual terms– the love affair of Raphael and La Fornarina.
This talk by Professor Judith Testa will first recount the legend of “La Fornarina” and consider the painting by Raphael of a beautiful nude woman identified as her portrait. With the story and the painting in mind, the talk will present Picasso’s etchings– works so powerful and explicit in their sexual imagery that they have never been allowed to be exhibited in the United States.
Judith Testa was born and grew up in New York. She came to Chicago to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago, where she received MA and PhD degrees in Renaissance Art History. Before her retirement, she taught history of art at Northern Illinois University. While on the faculty of the NIU School of Art, she received the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching award four times, and she was also awarded a Presidential
Teaching Professorship. Since retiring, she spends several months of each year in Rome, the place she calls “the city of my soul.” She writes book reviews, travel and history articles for Fra Noi, the monthly magazine of the greater Chicago area Italian American community. In addition to many scholarly publications, she is the author of three books for the general reader: Rome Is Love Spelled Backward (Roma Amor)— essays about Rome’s major monuments and personalities; Sal Maglie. Baseball’s Demon Barber, the biography of a 1950‘s New York baseball star of Italian American background; and most recently, An Art Lover’s Guide to Florence.
For more information or to RSVP, please visit https://x-ratedraphael.eventbrite.com