Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and Vienna’s Albertina have joined forces to co-organise a Raphael exhibition in 2017. The show will feature drawings by Raphael that the Ashmolean acquired in 1842 from the celebrated collection amassed by the painter Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830). The British artist had offered his entire Old Masters drawing collection to the nation on his death, but the British Museum’s trustees baulked at the price—£18,000. A public subscription saved Lawrence’s Raphaels, as well as his drawings by Michelangelo, for the Oxford University museum. The exhibition is being co-organised by Catherine Whistler, the Ashmolean’s acting keeper of Western art, and Achim Gnann of the Albertina.
