#1504

Raphael

Raphael (1483-1520) was an Italian painter and architect who is regarded as one of the greatest of Renaissance artists alongside Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Raphael's works are celebrated for their harmonious composition and vibrant colouring. The Marriage of the Virgin painting and The School of Athens mural are considered among his greatest triumphs.

In his short life, Raphael created a huge catalogue of masterpieces in the media of oil painting, fresco and architecture, while a number of his creations were also converted into tapestries. In his later works, Raphael was a pioneer of the new artistic style called Mannerism where unnatural elegance replaced the Classical-inspired and ordered grandeur of the High Renaissance.

Early Life

With very few details of the artist's life known and no certain surviving portrait, future generations have been obliged to know Raphael by his works alone. Fortunately, it is through those works and records of commissions and letters that we are able to follow his dazzling career from one city to another as he established himself as one of the most loved and influential of all Renaissance artists.

Raphael, full name Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, was born in Urbino in the Marche region of Italy in 1483. His father was Giovanni Santi (d. 1494), a painter of not much renown at the court of Urbino. It is likely the young man learnt from his father and then from the Urbino artist Timoteo Viti. Raphael then worked in Perugia from 1499 under the tutelage of the celebrated artist Pietro Perugino (c. 1450-1523) whose work included frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Perugino was often interested in creating a sense of space in his works and this approach would be adopted by his pupil, best seen in his The Marriage of the Virgin painting (see below), completed around 1504.

Bane (Absolute Universe) from Absolute Batman

"This man is already way bigger than the Batman of his universe. And then he uses Venom on himself and he gets EVEN BIGGER"

Oil painting, ca. 1504-1508, Italian.

Portraying a woman in a yellow and red gamurra.

Painted by Raphael.

Galleria Borghese.