Special exhibition marks 500 years of Raphael's Madonna

The special, historical and cultural exhibition at the Ho Chi Minh City Museum featuring Raphael'sbest works is divided into sections covering Raphael in Rome; acquisition and removal of the Sistine Madonna from Italy to Dresden; the place of the painting within literature, art, music and design and the cherubs' international career as a stand-alone artwork.

From 1508, Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known just as Raphael lived and worked in Rome, invited by Pope Julius II and his architect for St. Peter's, Donato Bramante who was distantly related to Raphael.

Working on Vatican projects and portraits, including those of his two main patrons, the popes Julius II and his successor Leo X Raphael, Raphael eventually had a workshop of fifty pupils and assistants.

The Sistine Madonna is one of the last works he is known to have painted with his own hands.Commissioned as an altarpiece for the Benedictine monastery of San Sisto in Piacenza, the Sistine Madonna is one of his last works.

Raphael finished it around 1513 - a few years before he died aged 37 years in 1520.