The Transfiguration
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
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About this painting
Raphael put two consecutive moments in one frame. Above, Christ lifts off the mountain in light he seems to make himself. Below, a possessed boy the disciples have just failed to cure — and they are not healing him, they are pointing, sending the father up toward a glory he cannot reach and cannot see.
Splendour and helplessness are not sequential here. They are adjacent, happening at once, a few hundred yards apart.
Raphael died on 6 April 1520 with it unfinished. Vasari says it stood at the head of his bier. The night he died was Good Friday.
Sources: Musei Vaticani, Pinacoteca, Sala VIII · Andrea Lonardo, following Maurizio Calvesi · Christian K. Kleinbub, 'Raphael's Transfiguration as Visio-Devotional Program,' The Art Bulletin 90, no. 3 (2008) · Pandolfo Pico to Isabella d'Este, Rome, 7 April 1520 · Giorgio Vasari, Lives, Life of Raphael (de Vere trans.): 'they placed at his head the picture of the Transfiguration'
And he was transfigured before them. And his face did shine as the sun: and his garments became white as snow.
Matthew 17:2 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 4,980 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.