September 18th at 6pm - Italian Cultural Institute, 500 N Michigan Ave, Suite 1450, Chicago. Free Entrance. The romantic and erotic tale of the painter Raphael and his mysterious Roman mistress--known to posterity as "La Fornarina," The Baker's Daughter-- is one of the most intriguing stories to come down to us from the Italian Renaissance. In 1967, at the astonishing age of 87, Picasso produced a suite of 25 etchings in which he imagined-- and expressed in rapturously sexual terms-- the love affair of Raphael and La Fornarina.

This talk by Professor Judith Testa will first recount the legend of "La Fornarina" and consider the painting by Raphael of a beautiful nude woman identified as her portrait. With the story and the painting in mind, the talk will present Picasso's etchings-- works so powerful and explicit in their sexual imagery that they have never been allowed to be exhibited in the United States.