The Sheen Center in partnership with The New York Chapter of the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums

Resurrecting Raphael: Renewing Appreciation for a Renaissance Master

Buy Tickets

Date
May 8, 2026
Event Starts
7:00 PM
Location
Loreto Theater
Ticket Prices
$45 (Including Fees)
Availability
On Sale Now

Friday, May 8, 2026 7:00PM 7:00 PM Buy Tickets

Event Details

Feted by kings, sought after by popes, blessed by Fame and Fortune, Raphael's Sanzio's sudden death in 1520 signaled the end of the Renaissance. Over the interim centuries, public adulation of his art has waxed and waned, his genius increasingly obscured by more graphic artistic appetites and diminishing attention spans. In this talk, given in conjunction with the landmark Raphael exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Liz Lev will resurrect the audacious genius of the painter from Urbino who embraced new technologies, fearlessly faced competition, as well as reigning supreme in Rome's gossip pages. Creative, daring, and brilliant, Raphael deployed his talents in the service of evoking the sublime, an artistic mission to offer a glimpse of the transcendent in a fallen world. Learn how to look at this extraordinary art and to discern how Raphael's way of beauty can return light to our lives.

This lecture is being sponsored by The New York Chapter of the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums.

About Elizabeth Lev

Elizabeth Lev holds degrees in art history from the University of Chicago and the University of Bologna and teaches art history at University of Mary’s Rome campus and the Pontifical University of Thomas Aquinas. She is a well-known tour guide and has served as a consultant to the Vatican Museums for their
art and faith itineraries, projects with the Vatican Patrons of the Arts and wrote “Vatican Treasures: The Via Pulchritudinis,” a film presented to Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. Lev’s books include The Tigress of Forlì and How Catholic Art Saved the Faith, and she has written for many news outlets, including The Washington Post and First Things. She has been a Vatican analyst for
MSNBC for three conclaves, and has appeared on the Today Show, Nightline and 60 Minutes and her TED Talk on the Sistine Chapel has garnered over 1.9 million views. She was featured in the EWTN+ series “Seeking Beauty with David Henrie”, and her latest book on Caravaggio will come out this year.
She lives in Rome with her husband, Thomas Williams, and their son Joshua, and is also a certified sommelier.