Art-Raphael-Portrait of a Young Man TB

This trackable has the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by more than 25 cachers. That is a rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days.  As of 12-Apr-21 it had survived for 4.2 years and had been moved by 13 cachers, for an average release every 119 days.

No permission is needed to leave the U.S.  While in the U.S., please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.

I have already released series of art-themed travel bugs based on works I have seen in person.  I will continue the series mostly including works I simply admire.  There will also be famous works or works by famous artists that I otherwise do not particularly care for, but they are….well,..famous.  My disdain extends to most Modern Art and a good amount from the Pop Art movement.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483 –1520), known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance.  His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.  Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work.  Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career.  After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking.

His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504–1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates.

The work featured on this travel bug is his Portrait of a Young Man, painted 1513–1514.  The subject's identity is unverified, but many scholars have traditionally regarded it as a self-portrait.  In 1798 Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, son of Princess Izabela Czartoryska brought two portraits from Italy to Poland, this one and Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine.  Both paintings were stolen by the Nazis.  This painting is regarded by some historians as the most important work of art still missing from World War II.  Its value, if found, cannot be estimated.