A Casa offers an intimate dialogue between Raphael Sanzio (Urbino, 1483 – Rome, 1520) and Michelle Gagliano (Jamestown, NY 1964), two painters separated by five centuries and one ocean. Hosted in Raphael’s native house located in the heart of the picturesque village of Urbino, A Casa is above all an homage to our common home: The Terra Mater.

Deeply inspired by the language of landscape and committed to an environmentally conscious artistic practice, Michelle Gagliano has dedicated her life to painting in nature, respecting its grace and complexity. This reverence is precisely what guided the Virginian painter to study Raphael Urbinas with scrutiny: it is by searching for a sustainable alternative to chemical paints that the Italian-American painter went back to the most prolific painter of the High Renaissance.

The exhibition gives an opportunity to reflect on the social and anthropological changes that occurred during the liminal space between the Renaissance and today’s era. The dialogue between a remarkable female artist and one of the greatest male painters from the XVth century is an occasion to dwell on the evolution of women’s roles. In like manner, the human-centric ideology, positioning humans as the pinnacle of creation as symbolized by the Vitruvian cosmogram from Leonardo Da Vinci can only be revisited in the light of the Anthropocene.

The project is presented by Academia Raffaello and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. It is promoted by the Indigo Association and received the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Marche Region.