Raphael, in full Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, was an Italian painter and architect, who represented the High Renaissance. Although his Madonnas and large figure compositions in the Vatican Palace stand out for their compositional simplicity and clarity of forms, each of them showcases magnificence and dignity of human grandeur.
Background
Raphael was born on March 28 or April 6, 1483 in Urbino, Marche, Italy (the Duchy of Urbino at the time). He was a son of Magia di Battista Ciarla and Giovanni Santi di Pietro, who served as a painter for the Duke of Urbino, Federigo da Montefeltro.
Education
Raphael was first trained in arts by his father. Although described by an art historian Giorgio Vasari as a painter "of no great merit," Giovanni Santi taught his son basic principles of painting and the advanced techniques.
At the time, the court of Urbino became a cultural center under Guidobaldo da Montefeltro and his wife, Elisabetta Gonzaga, that certainly contributed to the artistic and social formation of a young artist. According to Vasari, it was Raphael's father, who, probably shortly before his death in 1494 (three years later after Raphael's mother's death), sent his son as an apprentice to the workshop of the Umbrian master, Pietro Perugino. The artist is supposed to have the first important artistic influence on Raphael.
Other scholars claimed, that Raphael also took some lessons from another artist of the time, Timoteo Viti. According to Vasari, by the autumn of 1504, Raphael had traveled to Florence, where he explored the works of such High Renaissance masters, as Leonardo, Michelangelo, Fra Bartolommeo and a pioneer of naturalism, Masaccio.
Career
The first documented work of Raphael as an independent artist, the Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in a town of Città di Castello, was produced in collaboration with his father's colleague, Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, and dates to 1501.
By 1504, according to an art historian, Giorgio Vasari, the artist had taken up residence in Florence. The works, that he produced between 1505 and 1507, in particular, a great series of Madonnas, including The Madonna of the Goldfinch, the Madonna del Prato, the Esterházy Madonna and La Belle Jardinière, demonstarted a strong influence of Leonardo.
Largely applying da Vinci's compositional methods, his lighting techniques, chiaroscuro and sfumato, Raphael, however, went ahead the master by elaborating his own figure types distinctive by both the depth and simplicity of their facial expressions. The influence from Michelangelo was most strongly felt in Raphael's Deposition of Christ, considered to be his major work during Florentine period.
Raphael was invited to Rome at the end of 1508 by Pope Julius II on the advice of an architect Donato Bramante. The following twelve years, that he spent in the city, were full of activity, manifested in the creation of many of his masterpieces. First, Raphael was entrusted to produce a series of frescoes in three mid-sized rooms of the Vatican papal residence, known as the Stanze. The decoration of the first two, Stanza della Segnatura and Stanza d'Eliodoro, was completed almost totally by Raphael himself, while the frescoes in the Stanza dell'Incendio, though also designed by the artist, were executed with extensive assistance of his many pupils. The work in the papal apartments lasted until 1517, when Leo X succeeded Julius after his death.
The decoration of the Stanza della Segnatura coincided with Raphael's debut as an architect. In 1509, the artist designed the church of Sant'Eligio degli Orefici and, four years later, the Chigi Chapel, the funerary chapel of the banker Agostino Chigi in Santa Maria del Popolo. In 1514, Raphael joined Bramante in the work on the Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in Vatican City and headed up the project after Bramante's death later that same year.
Satisfied with Raphael's excellent work on the Stanzas, Leo X assigned him to elaborate the design of 10 large tapestries for the Sistine Chapel. The sketches for the seven of them had been completed by 1516, and the tapestries, made under the sketches, appeared on the Chapel's walls three years later.
Raphael also produced a series of Madonnas, while working and living in Rome. His Alba Madonna of 1508 was followed by the Madonna di Foligno and the Sistine Madonna. The maturity and the softness of the works were apparent in contrast to his early Madonnas.
Raphael also proved himself to be an excellent portraitist, becoming the most influential in the genre during the first two decades of the 16th century. The portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, produced in 1516, and the portrait, featuring Leo X with two Cardinals, completed three years later, are probably the most outstanding examples of Raphael's talent in the area.
By the end of the 1510's, Raphael had been in charge of almost all important artistic projects in Rome, including architecture, paintings and decoration, and the preservation of antiquities. The Transfiguration, the last work by the master, commissioned by Giulio Cardinal de' Medici in 1517, remained unfinished and was completed by his assistant, Giulio Romano, after his death.
Raphael chose religious subjects, from Madonnas to the Old and New testaments scenes, more frequently than others as it can be seen through the entire body of his work.
Views
Quotations:
"Time is a vindictive bandit to steal the beauty of our former selves. We are left with sagging, rippled flesh and burning gums with empty sockets."
"When one is painting one does not think."
Personality
An outstanding master of art and a quick learner, Raphael was a handsome man with great charm. He was dubbed as "the prince of painters," when he worked in Rome.
Quotes from others about the person
Pablo Picasso, a painter: "Leonardo da Vinci promises us heaven. Raphael gives it to us."
Neal Ascherson, an art historian: "19th century ideas of European civilization imagined art as an evolutionary process, which would culminate in perfection, Raphael seemed to embody perfection."
Connections
Raphael never married, though he is supposed to have several romantic relationships, including those with a baker's daughter, Margherita Luti, also known as La Fornarina, his long-term beloved.
The artist was once engaged to Maria Bibbiena, Cardinal Bernardo Dovizi Bibbiena's niece, though the marriage never took place.