The Boston Raphael: A Mysterious Painting, an Embattled Museum in an Era of Change, and a Daughter's Search for the Truth

The full, inside story of how the discovery of a previously unknown painting by Raphael, the Italian Renaissance master, went from media sensation to career-destroying scandal.

On the eve of its centennial celebrations in December, 1969, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts announced the acquisition of an unknown and uncatalogued painting attributed to Raphael. Boston’s coup made headlines around the world. Soon afterward, an Italian art sleuth began investigating the details of the painting’s export from Italy, challenged the museum’s right to ownership. Simultaneously, experts on both sides of the Atlantic lined up to debate the artwork’s very authenticity.

While these contests played themselves out on the international stage, the crisis deepened within the museum as its charismatic director, Perry T. Rathbone, faced the most challenging crossroads of his thirty-year career. The facts about the forces that converged on the museum, and how they led to Rathbone’s resignation as director, is only now fully revealed in this compelling, behind-the-scenes story that reveals how the art world, media, and museums work. This is for anyone who relishes stories of the business of art.

Belinda Rathbone is a biographer and historian who has written widely on 20th-century American art and photography. In addition to The Boston Raphael, she is the author of Walker Evans: A Biography, George Rickey: A Life in Balance, a memoir, The Guynd, and edited the forthcoming, In the Company of Art: A Museum Director's Private Journals by Perry T. Rathbone.