The exhibition Love, Art and Grace featuring the newly restored Raphael masterpiece entitled The Madonna of the Goldfinch has attracted record numbers of visitors since it opened in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, on the 23 rd November 2008. The painting, one of the worlds best-known representations of the Madonna and Child, is part of the Uffizi Gallery collection but has not been visible for the past ten years, while undergoing a delicate and extremely difficult restoration operation in the laboratories of the Florentine Opificio delle Pietre Dure. The painting had been badly damaged in a landslide in 1548, some 28 years after Raphaels death, and had been restored by a contemporary artist, believed by experts to have been Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio. Subsequent cleaning and retouching had left the original work intact and modern restorers have thus been able to strip off centuries of dust and grime to reveal Raphaels original hand.
An average 1,800 visitors per day have been to admire the masterpiece in its original glory, including American film director Woody Allen, Italian singer Gianna Nannini and the Archbishop of Florence, Monsignor Betoni.
The exhibition runs until the
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