Renaissance
Raphael (1483–1520)
Italian High Renaissance painter.
Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio, 1483–1520) completed, with Leonardo and Michelangelo, the trinity of the High Renaissance, and stood in his own century as the very model of the graceful, harmonious painter. Born in Urbino, the son of the court painter Giovanni Santi, he trained under Pietro Perugino, whose sweet, balanced manner he swiftly surpassed. A stay in Florence (c. 1504–1508) let him absorb Leonardo's sfumato and pyramidal compositions and Michelangelo's anatomy; from these he forged a style of effortless clarity and grace.
Called to Rome by Pope Julius II in 1508, Raphael painted the papal apartments (the Stanze) in the Vatican, whose School of Athens is the supreme image of Renaissance humanism — the philosophers of antiquity gathered in a vast, luminous hall of perfect perspective. He became the most sought-after artist in Rome, running a large workshop, painting radiant Madonnas and penetrating portraits, designing tapestries and buildings, and briefly serving as architect of St Peter's. His portrait of his friend the courtier Baldassare Castiglione embodies the ideal of cultivated, effortless nobility that Castiglione himself described.
Raphael died on his thirty-seventh birthday, and the shock of so early a loss became part of his legend. Vasari made him the hero of grace and universality, the painter whose sweetness and harmony seemed to reconcile all difficulties. For centuries after, 'Raphaelesque' was a synonym for ideal beauty in art.
The words the record keeps using: graceful, harmonious, serene, ideal, clear, poised, sweet.
At a glance
- Lived 1483–1520
- Origin Italian (from Urbino)
- Worked in Florence, Rome
- Era Renaissance
- Movements High Renaissance
- Mediums Fresco, Oil on panel, Oil on canvas
- Techniques Buon fresco, Oil glazing, Sfumato, Linear perspective
Works in the archive
- Madonna del Prato (Madonna of the Meadow), 1506 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
A serene Florentine-period panel showing the Virgin seated in a flowering meadow, watching over the infant Christ and the young John the Baptist, who offers Christ a slender cross that foreshadows the Passion. It… - The School of Athens, 1509 (Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican Palace, Rome)
The supreme image of Renaissance humanism: the great philosophers and scientists of antiquity gathered in a vast, light-filled classical hall. At its centre Plato (pointing upward to the ideal) and Aristotle (gesturing… - The Sistine Madonna, 1512 (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden)
An altarpiece commissioned for the church of San Sisto in Piacenza, showing the Virgin descending through parted curtains on a bank of cloud, carrying the Christ Child toward the viewer, flanked by St Sixtus and St… - Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, 1515 (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
A portrait of Raphael's close friend the diplomat and writer Baldassare Castiglione, author of The Book of the Courtier — the handbook of the cultivated Renaissance gentleman. The sitter, in subtle greys, black, and…
What was said
In a letter to Baldassare Castiglione, Raphael explained that because beautiful women are scarce, in order to paint a beauty he relies on 'a certain idea' of beauty that comes into his mind — an ideal formed in the imagination rather than copied from any single model.
Vasari made Raphael the very embodiment of grace, sweetness, and universality, holding that nature had shown in him how bountifully she could combine talent and gentleness, and mourning his death at thirty-seven as a loss that plunged all Rome into grief.
Castiglione, whose Book of the Courtier praised the effortless grace he called sprezzatura, corresponded warmly with Raphael and prized his portrait of him; the painter and the writer shared an ideal of cultivated, seemingly effortless nobility.
What would Raphael make of your idea?
The Artiquity Studio makes a new picture in this hand's manner from a few words or a photograph — grounded in the technique, palette and subjects recorded above, and always credited "after Raphael", never passed off as a found work. Open the Studio with Raphael · Keep a life moment the way Raphael would · Pictures made after Raphael