Honors Rendered to Raphael on His Deathbed

This homage to the great Italian Renaissance painter Raphael falls into the late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century tradition of paintings of meetings between -or in this case, the deaths of-famous historical figures. Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret's painting depicts Pope Leo X and Cardinal Bembo, among many other important figures, at Raphael's deathbed in Rome in 1520. Architect and painter Baldassare Peruzzi points toward Raphael's last painting, the Transfiguration, which hangs over his bed; engraver Marcantonio Raimondi looks toward a cup of Raphael's blood with downcast eyes; and Michelangelo in a yellow cloak and fellow artist Sebastiano del Piombo in red enter at the door on the left. While the manner is realistic, the painting does not in fact depict an actual event; Michelangelo was not in Rome at the time, and Giorgio Vasari, who is shown at lower left penning Raphael's life for his book of the lives of artists, was a mere eight years old.

The painting was exhibited by Bergeret at the Paris Salon of 1806, where it was purchased by Napoleon for his wife Empress Josephine. She installed it in the Music Room of her château at Malmaison, later bequeathing it to her son, Eugène de Beauharnais, who took it with him to Munich. When he died in 1824, the painting passed to a Belgian private collector and was later bought from the Heim Gallery in London in 1982. Research at the time of purchase by then AMAM director Richard Spear and curator William Olander led to the revelation that this work is Bergeret's original-the one exhibited at the Salon and acquired by Napoleon. Another version long believed to be the original, which was purchased in 1847 by King Louis-Philippe, currently hangs at Malmaison. The 1806 catalogue description of the Salon painting and a print made after the original both conform to the AMAM work. The dimensions of this painting are slightly smaller than those of the later version at Malmaison (which is signed but not dated), and there are other noticeable differences between the two, including the pattern of the carpet, the shape of the feather fan, and the hair color of a figure in the foreground.