The Colonna Altarpiece

Between 1504 and 1505, the 21-year-old Raphael created this altarpiece ensemble for the Convent of Sant’Antonio da Padova in Perugia — a complete system of main panel, lunette, and predella narrative panels. Over five centuries the pieces were separated and scattered across four museums in three countries. The Met’s Raphael exhibition reunites them for the first time, making this the most emotionally charged event of the entire show.

One Painting Became Four Pieces of a Puzzle

To understand the Colonna Altarpiece, you first need to understand the basic anatomy of a Renaissance altarpiece. It wasn’t a single painting hung on a wall — it was a miniature piece of architecture: a main panel (tavola) in the center, a semicircular lunette above, and a row of small narrative panels called the predella along the bottom, usually depicting story scenes related to the central theme. The whole assembly sat in a wooden frame like a stage, positioned directly above a church altar. Raphael’s set for the Convent of Sant’Antonio in Perugia included: a main panel showing the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints (Peter, Catherine, Cecilia, Paul, and the infant John the Baptist), a lunette of God the Father Blessing with Cherubim, and several predella narrative panels. When the convent was suppressed in the 17th century, the altarpiece was dismantled and sold off — the main panel passed through the hands of the Colonna family (hence the name “Colonna Altarpiece”) and eventually entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the lunette also ended up at the Met; but the predella panels were scattered between the National Gallery in London and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

He Painted This at 21? Raphael’s “Graduation Piece”

When Raphael received this commission, he had just left the workshop of his teacher Perugino and was in a delicate transitional phase: technically mature enough to take on independent commissions, but stylistically not yet free of his master’s fingerprints. Look closely at the main panel and you’ll see two forces pulling against each other. Perugino’s influence is unmistakable: the symmetrical composition, the sweet facial types, the blue-green Umbrian hills in the background. But Raphael’s own voice is already pushing through: the saints’ poses are more natural and relaxed than Perugino’s figures, the colors richer and more saturated, the drapery handled with a close observation of how real fabric actually behaves — these aren’t clothes copied from a template but actual textiles with weight and drape. A 21-year-old, completing his metamorphosis from apprentice to master right there on the panel.

Madonna, Saints, and Symbols: Who Is Who?

The main panel depicts a Sacra Conversazione — “Holy Conversation” — one of the most common formats in Renaissance religious painting. Here’s who’s in the picture: the Virgin Mary sits enthroned at center holding the infant Jesus; the saints flanking her each carry identifying attributes. Saint Peter holds keys (Jesus gave him the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, making him the symbol of the first pope). Saint Paul carries a sword (he was martyred by beheading). Saint Catherine is typically shown with a spiked wheel (she was condemned to death on a breaking wheel but miraculously survived). Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of music. The small child in the foreground is the young John the Baptist, who would later baptize Jesus in the wilderness — he appears here because in Florence and Umbria, John the Baptist was one of the most popular saints. None of these figures actually occupied the same room in history; a Sacra Conversazione is an imaginary gathering, like pulling people from different centuries into the same group photo.

The Predella: A Storyline Torn Apart

The predella panels are the most heartbreaking part of this altarpiece — not because of what they depict, but because of what happened to them. These small panels illustrate three scenes from Christ’s Passion: The Agony in the Garden (Christ praying alone in anguish the night before his arrest), The Procession to Calvary (the procession carrying the cross to the execution site), and the Pieta (the Virgin cradling the dead Christ). The Agony in the Garden and The Procession to Calvary are now in the National Gallery in London; the Pieta is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. They went their separate ways when the convent was dissolved in the 17th century and had not been reunited since — until the Met’s 2026 exhibition Raphael, 520 years after he painted them. Imagine a film cut into three reels, each locked in a vault on a different continent, and you are watching the complete movie spliced back together for the first time.

A Young Painter’s Last Days in Perugia

Perugia in 1504 was a small city, not the center of the artistic universe the way Florence was. Raphael grew up there, studied painting under Perugino there, and received one of his most important early commissions there. But his mind was already elsewhere. In the same year or shortly after painting the Colonna Altarpiece, he set out for Florence carrying a letter of introduction from the court of Urbino — a letter that essentially said, “This young man has talent; please look after him.” Once in Florence, he saw the work of Leonardo and Michelangelo firsthand, and his style began to shift dramatically. The Colonna Altarpiece is therefore a snapshot: it captures Raphael’s final appearance as a painter of small-city Perugia — still carrying the gentle shadow of his teacher, but already reaching toward a larger world.

The Reunion Itself Is the Story

The most powerful moment in a museum exhibition is often not any single masterpiece but the instant a relationship is restored. The panels of the Colonna Altarpiece existed as a unified whole inside the convent for nearly 200 years, then were torn apart by historical violence, entered the commercial art market separately, were purchased by different collectors, crossed oceans, and ended up on four different walls in three different countries. Each panel, in its respective museum, was simply “a small Raphael.” But when they are placed together again, they become a complete altarpiece once more — carrying the scale of the convent, the light of the church, and the full ambition of a 21-year-old genius. To make this reunion possible in the 2026 Raphael exhibition, the Met’s curators negotiated for years with the National Gallery in London and the Gardner Museum. That cross-ocean effort is itself a story about faith in art: these institutions agreed to temporarily release some of their most prized possessions so that something history had shattered could be made whole again, if only for a few months.