episode 8 with carmen bambach
In this episode
After visiting Raphael: Sublime Poetry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Caro Fowler emerged with a transformed understanding of Raphael. In this conversation, she speaks with curator Carmen Bambach about the exhibition’s poignant reframing of Raphael’s Madonna and Child paintings through the lens of maternal and infant mortality in Renaissance Italy. Together they explore the role of biography in art history, Raphael’s extraordinary drawings, and what becomes visible when we take the female body seriously—not as an object of desire, but as a force that makes life, art, and the world itself.
TRANSCRIPT
Carmen C. Bambach is the Marica F. and Jan T. Vilcek Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She holds a PhD from Yale University and was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bambach is a specialist in Italian art and has authored ninety scholarly articles and ten exhibition catalogues, including the award-winning Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer (2017), The Drawings of Bronzino Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman (2003), Correggio and Parmigianino (2000), and The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle (1997). Her other books include her award-winning Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered (4 vols., Yale University Press, 2019) and Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Theory and Practice, 1300–1600 (Cambridge University Press, 1999).