Vatican Museums, Uffizi team up to confirm a Raphael is real

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Two of the world’s most important art museums, the Vatican Museums and the Uffizi Galleries, are joining forces for the first time to inaugurate a small exhibit of rarely seen works by Rafael and Fra Bartolomeo. “Saints Peter and Paul by Raphael and Fra Bartolomeo. An homage to the Patrons of Rome,” marks the first exhibit for the Vatican Museums in over a year because of COVID-19 lockdowns. The nearly life-sized paintings of Saints Peter and Paul are normally kept outside public view in the Papal Audience Apartment of the Apostolic Palace. But they have been restored and are being displayed on Friday for the first time alongside their preparatory sketches, usually held by the Uffizi Galleries, that Fra Bartolemeo made around 1513.