The Raphael blockbuster has had so much praise that it was hardly a surprise to read in the papers that the National Gallery had confidently decided to crank up the gushing preview coverage a bit more by unwrapping some of the exhibition's borrowed pieces in the presence of selected art critics. As stunts go, this was a rather charming one.
Writing in the Times, the normally reserved Rachel Campbell-Johnston lost it completely. She described a "drama of shadows" as the bubble wrap came off one masterpiece depicting the Resurrection, which had been flown in from Brazil. The scene read like something out of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. Humble workmen turned off their drills and clustered forth on creaking floorboards as the crate was gently laid on a table and the painting unwrapped. The head curator, Carol Plazzotta, burst into tears of joy. Her colleague Tom Henry "curled an arm around her shoulders", while assistants "stepped closer". The scene couldn't have been more touching if one of them had been dressed up in a tea towel as a shepherd from a school Nativity play.
However, this is only one side of the story. Just three days before the show was due to open, the curators had an altogether more surprising moment. Fortunately, no journalists were present. Painting No 4 in the show had been loaned to the National from the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, a museum in Raphael's birthplace of Urbino. It was the Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels by Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father, a man the Urbino tourist website says "might have been consigned to the lumber-room of art history if he hadn't been the father of the divine Raphael". It seems that the town's Galleria Nazionale might concur with this; at any rate, the museum had sent over the wrong painting.
The moment of opening was apparently greeted not with tears of joy, but with gasps of horror. The Dead Christ was clearly regarded as an important work in the exhibition: not only had it been reproduced in the catalogue, but it was destined to appear as a postcard in the shop. Now the curators were faced with an altogether different Santi. Not only that, but this one didn't have a proper export licence - hardly surprising, as it hadn't been requested for the exhibition. The National Gallery was in effect in charge of a priceless and illegally exported Renaissance treasure.
Apparently, the relevant culture minister had to be called out of bed to authorise an export licence for the rogue picture. Whose minister? Not ours, fortunately. I was assured that this had nothing to do with the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, or her arts minister, Estelle Morris. "The licence would have had to come from the Italian cultural minister," said a government spokesperson. "Any egg on face would have been at their end, not ours."
With two days to go, the National went into overdrive. Happily, the correct Santi arrived just in time to be on show for the press preview. The press office was loath to go into the details. "I don't know how much I can say," said a spokeswoman, before e-mailing me a statement explaining that the gallery has a policy of never "discussing loan arrangements and transportation of paintings". Unless, of course, it is pretty damn sure what has just arrived in the bubble wrap.
