Di Maria De Paoli
After the closures due to the COVID-emergency, the attenuation of the precautionary measures has allowed the reopening of museum and the other cultural places as the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana of Milan in which you can finally admire the Raphael’s Cartoon Room designed by the architect Stefano Boeri and opened to the public at the end of 2019. This room was created to host the cartoon of the School of Athens of Raphael. In the 1960s and in the 1990s respectively Luigi Cacciadominioni and Griffini has already built installations with this aim; Boeri improved their jobs maintaining some elements of continuity. After the lockdowns we can enjoy the work of this architect, who designed and created all the space in order to protect the cartoon and prevent its deterioration. Stefano Boeri designed a display case in which the masterpiece is inserted: the glass of this display defends the cartoon by ultraviolet rays in order to guarantee the best preservation over the time and, at the same time, it doesn’t prevent an excellent vision for the observers.
The architect declared that in his project he had wanted to highlight the double nature of this cartoon: in the same time, from one side it’s a finished and complete art piece, from the other side it’s the preparative drawing for the final froesco, a step that belongs to a longer and very complex process. The architect wanted to maintain both these aspects of the masterpiece: in addition to enhancing the cartoon as a complete art piece, he promoted the creation of a didactic table (created in collaboration with Riva1920). On this oak wood table visitors can find a collection of texts, images and documents and they can consult them to understand all the history of the cartoon, its physical manufacture and its creation.