Brukenthal Museum to bring Raphael’s ‘Young Woman with Unicorn’ to Romania for the first time

Raphael’s famous painting Young Woman with Unicorn will be exhibited at the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu in 2027, marking the first time the masterpiece will be shown in the country.

The exhibition is part of a broader collaboration between the Brukenthal Museum and major European institutions, including the renowned Galleria Borghese in Rome.

Following a series of meetings and discussions in the Italian capital, an agreement was reached for a two-part cultural exchange between 2025 and 2027. As part of this deal, Leda and the Swan by Leonardo da Vinci will be displayed in Sibiu at the end of 2025, followed by Young Woman with Unicorn in 2027, the museum said.

“It is a great joy to announce that the renowned Galleria Borghese in Rome has accepted our request. I had numerous discussions with the director, Dr. Francesca Cappelletti, and we both recognized the importance of institutional collaboration. We will now be able to organize major exhibitions both in Romania and in Italy. Displaying a work by Leonardo da Vinci and later by Raphael at the Brukenthal National Museum highlights our commitment to achieving meaningful things for the community, for the museum, and for Romania,” said Alexandru Constantin Chituță, manager of the Brukenthal Museum.

“It is by no means easy to negotiate the loan of two major masterpieces that are in high demand from leading museums around the world. But we succeeded. We have the agreement of the Galleria Borghese, and now we must work to organize two historic and memorable events,” he added.

Young Woman with Unicorn, attributed to the Renaissance master Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, is one of his most celebrated early portraits. The painting shows a young woman seated before a landscape, dressed in a finely detailed gown with a red velvet bodice and golden accessories.

A small unicorn, symbolizing purity, rests in her lap. Radiographic studies revealed that the unicorn originally may have been a dog, a symbol of marital fidelity, and the woman was long believed to be Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the Brukenthal Museum explained.

Believed to have been painted between 1504 and 1509, the work was previously misattributed to other artists, but after a restoration, scholars widely recognized it as an early Raphael.

(Photo source: Flaviu Boerescu/Dreamstime.com)