Raphael seen through MA-XRF: understanding the master and his atelier by studying the Capodimonte collection

• Artworks in the Capodimonte collection trace Raphael’s career and technical progress. • High-res MA-XRF scanning redefines the master’s distinctive material features. • The study clarifies if the workshop imitated/diverged from the master’s style. • Chemical data reveal Raphael’s experimentation in attributed workshop paintings. Raphael’s paintings in the Capodimonte collection, ‘Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte’ in Naples, offer the opportunity to describe the master’s great career and technical evolution from the earliest production, as in the Baronci Panel , to the mature collaboration with his pupil and successor Giulio Romano for the Madonna of the Cat . At the same time, coeval and later copies describe the impressive favour Raphael gained, yet when he was alive and in the following centuries. Studying the materiality of Raphael’s paintings in the Capodimonte collection brings more extensive knowledge on his technique, but also gives a sense of how his pupils and followers imitated or distanced themselves from him, participating to the discussion on the role of copies in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. MA-XRF scanning of Raphael’s works in the collection, and the analysis of artworks attributed to his workshop or identified as later copies assisted in the redefinition of the master’s material peculiarities. Beyond offering insights into the conservation history of the paintings, chemical data chiefly allowed the description of: (1) the master’s early technique in the Baronci panel , (2) the master’s practice, his material experimentation and conceptual setting up in works attributed to his workshop.