Raphael was believed to be 17 when he did this chalk sketch, likely a self-portrait. “What is really extraordinary is the perfection of his technique in drawing,” said curator Carmen Bambach.

You can see in this chalk sketch, by a kid, what was coming … how, in an incredibly short time, Raphael would be regarded as one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance, right up there with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.  “I think posterity sometimes sees him in third place,” said Bambach. “I believe he is in equal place.”

Bambach spent eight years putting together the first comprehensive exhibition of Raphael’s work ever in the United States – 237 works in total. It has just opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Born in Urbino in 1483, Raphael’s precociousness exploded into brilliance when he moved to Florence at the age of 21. “He encounters Leonardo, who is very interested in, sort of, the way that an artist can let the creative juices flow on the paper,” said Bambach. “Raphael absorbs this, and all of a sudden, we see this tremendous sense of movement, of drama, storytelling. He’s able to pick the climactic point of any story. He’s got to be one of the most amazing storytellers that way.”

The humanity, the tenderness of a mother with her baby … his drawings and paintings of the Madonna and Child are beautiful exercises in wishful thinking.

“Mortality of women of child-bearing age was stratospheric, and the same thing for children,” Bambach said. “When one has Madonnas that look like they’re a beautiful picture of health, these bambini that are plump and delightful – you want to pinch them! –  it’s like producing a kind of idealized universe that was entirely aspirational.”

As opposed to his portraits, which look like the real people he painted.

Bindo Altoviti was one of the pope’s bankers, and a friend of Raphael’s, who captured his gaze, the tendrils of hair down his back, the personification of sensuality. “Bindo Altoviti is kind of my favorite portrait in that I have always had a crush on that guy,” said Bambach.

Raphael’s friendships with well-connected patrons led to bigger and bigger commissions, and ultimately to Rome and the Vatican, at the age of 25, to produce frescoes for the pope’s private offices and library. (They are reproduced in the Met show at ¾ size.)

He slipped a likeness of himself into the most famous, “The School of Athens,” and of Leonardo. Some scholars say one brooding figure is Michelangelo.

Bambach said, “Michelangelo was intensely envious of Raphael. Raphael was the tragedy that happened to Michelangelo in many ways, because it came so easily to him.”

Raphael was commissioned to create the designs for enormous tapestries meant to hang directly below Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Of the artist’s drawing of an old and young man, Bambach noted, “This is the most beautiful drawing that Raphael ever produced. For somebody to get that foreshortening of the fingers, and the different planes of the hands in a credible way, this is how you tell the greatest artists from somebody who is just good.”

The drawing was for “The Transfiguration,” what would turn out to be his last painting.

On April 6, 1520, his 37th birthday, Raphael died of a fever in Rome. The inscription on his tomb in the Pantheon reads, “While he was alive, Nature feared she would be surpassed by him. When he died, she feared that she would die, too.”

     
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Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Remington Korper. 

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Taylor Swift has never performed at the Coachella stage but she is reportedly returning as an attendee this year at the event to watch her friends perform.

The 36-year-old pop superstar last attended the festival in 2024 with her now-fiancé Travis Kelce and the two seemed to be having the best time as they danced and sang along together. 

This year, the Opalite hitmaker is expected to attend her pals Sabrina Carpenter and Sombr’s Coachella sets both of whom have highly-anticipated performances planned for the festival. 

Carpenter is one of the headliners for this year – alongside Justin Bieber and Karol G, and will be performing on April 10, 11, and 12. 

While Sombr is listed as a performer on April 12 and April 19. 

Excited fans quickly flocked to the comments and collectively hoped, “SABRINA NEEEDSSSSS TO BRING OUT TAYLOR OMG,” for their collaboration The Life of a Showgirl title track.

Some also chanted, “I need Sabrina to arrest Taylor,” referring to her Juno arrest tradition.

Despite the rumours, Swift’s attendance is not confirmed as of yet.

More than 50 years after humans first flew around the Moon, Artemis astronauts will repeat the feat on Monday and use the most basic instrument to study it: their eyes.

Despite the technological advancements since the Apollo missions, Nasa still relies on the eyesight of its astronauts to learn more about the Moon.

“The human eye is basically the best camera that could ever or will ever exist,” Kelsey Young, the lead scientist for the Artemis 2 mission, told AFP.

“The number of receptors in the human eye far outweighs what a camera is able to do.”

Although modern cameras may be superior to human eyesight in some respects, “the human eye is really good at color, and it’s really good at context, and it’s also really good at photometric observations,” Young said.

Humans can understand how lighting changes surface details, like how angled lighting reveals texture but reduces visible color.

In just the blink of an eye, humans can detect a subtle color shift and understand how lighting changes the contours of a landscape like the Moon’s surface, details which are scientifically useful but difficult to ascertain from photos or videos.

Artemis 2 astronaut Victor Glover, who pilots the Orion spacecraft, said before liftoff this week that eyes were a “magical instrument.”

Field scientists

To ensure they made the most of their proximity to the Moon, the four Artemis 2 crew members underwent more than two years of training.

Young said the goal was to turn the astronauts into “field scientists” via a combination of classroom lessons, geological expeditions to Iceland and Canada, and multiple simulated flybys of the Moon, just like the mission they are on.

The three American astronauts — commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Glover, and mission specialist Christina Koch — along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, all had to memorise the Moon’s “Big 15,” or the 15 features of the Moon that will allow them to orient themselves.

Using an inflatable Moon globe, they practiced seeing how the angle of the sun changed the colors and textures of the lunar surface, honing their observation and note-taking skills for the big moment.

“I can tell you, they are excited and they are ready,” Young said with a smile.

‘About the size of a basketball’

The Artemis astronauts’ mission is to study certain lunar sites and phenomena as part of 10 objectives chosen by Nasa and ranked in priority order based on scientific interest.

During the Moon flyby, which will last for several hours, the crew will have to observe the celestial body with their naked eyes, along with cameras they have on board.

Noah Petro, head of Nasa’s planetary geology lab, told AFP that the Moon will look to the astronauts “about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length.”

“The question I’m most interested in is, are they going to be able to see color on the lunar surface,” Petro said.

“I don’t mean rainbow colors, but you know, dark browns or tan colors because that tells us something about the composition, and that tells us something about the history of the Moon.”

David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute told AFP he is not expecting any earth-shattering discoveries because of the multiple lunar probes and high-resolution images of the Moon taken since the Apollo missions.

Nevertheless, “having astronauts describing what they’re seeing… That is an occurrence that at least two generations of people on Earth have never heard before,” he said.

The Artemis 2 flyby will be broadcast live by Nasa, save for a period for when the spacecraft is behind the moon.

“Just listening to their practice descriptions in the mission simulations… It brings chills up my arms,” Young said.

“I am absolutely confident that these four people are going to deliver some incredible descriptions.”