Raphael

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This article is about the Renaissance artist. For other uses, see Raphael (disambiguation).
Raffaello Sanzio

Self-portrait by Raphael
Birth name Raffaello Sanzio
Born April 6, 1483(1483-04-06)
Urbino, Italy
Died April 6, 1520 (Age 37)
Rome, Italy
Nationality Italian
Field Painting
Training Perugino
Movement Renaissance
Famous works School of Athens

Raphael Sanzio or Raffaello (April 6, 1483 – April 6, 1520) was an Italian master painter and architect of the Florentine school in High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings. He was also called Raffaello Sanzio, Raffaello Santi, Raffaello da Urbino or Rafael Sanzio da Urbino.

Contents

  • 1 Early life and work
  • 2 Florentine period
  • 3 Roman period
  • 4 Printmaking
  • 5 Legacy
  • 6 Chronology of main works
    • 6.1 Early works
    • 6.2 Florentine period
    • 6.3 Roman period
  • 7 See also
  • 8 References
  • 9 External links

[edit] Early life and work

Raphael was born in Urbino.[1] The surname Sanzio derives from the latinization of the Italian, Santi, into Santius (also, when signing solely using his baptismal name, "Raphael"). His father, Giovanni Santi, was also a painter in the court of Urbino.

In 1491, his mother Màgia died; his father died on August 1, 1494, having already remarried. Thus orphaned at eleven, Raphael was entrusted to his uncle Bartolomeo, a priest. He had already shown talent, according to Giorgio Vasari - he tells that since childhood Raphael had been "a great help to his father". His father's workshop continued and probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. He is described as a "master" in 1501. In Urbino he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello and Luca Signorelli. According to Vasari, his father placed him in Umbrian master Pietro Perugino's workshop as an apprentice "despite the tears of his mother"; the subsequent influence of Perugino on Raphael's early work is most obvious. The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari, and has been disputed. But most modern historians agree that Raphael worked as an assistant to Perugino around 1500.[2]

His first documented work was an altarpiece for the church of San Nicola of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between Perugia and Urbino. It was ordered in 1500 and finished in 1501 (it was later seriously damaged during an earthquake in 1789 and today only fragments of it remain). In the following years he painted works for other churches there (like the Wedding of the Virgin, today in the Brera) and for Perugia.

[edit] Florentine period

Moving to Florence when he was around 20, he was exposed to Leonardo da Vinci, "whom he never ceased to admire as a mentor and father figure", and to Michelangelo, just eight years his senior, "with whom he later had a stormy and competitive relationship." (Leonardo died in 1519, one year before Raphael, but Michelangelo lived until 1564.) Raphael learned from both men, but while he made use of their exploration of human anatomy, he added sentiment to his paintings.[3] Raphael's time in Florence was very productive and the influences of Leonardo and Michelangelo (who were working on the Mona Lisa and David, respectively, at the time) is unmistakeable. At the time, Raphael's paintings bore "a strong Da Vinci influence with its pyramidal composition, contour, balance and interplay of light and dark (chiaroscuro) and sfumato (extremely fine, soft shading instead of line to delineate forms and features)," while others reveal a Michelangelic inspiration.[4]

[edit] Roman period

At the end of 1508, he moved to Rome (at the urging of Donato Bramante, the architect of St. Peter's)[5] and was immediately commissioned by Julius II to paint some of the rooms at his palace at the Vatican. This marked a turning point - he was only twenty-five years old, an artist in formation, and had not received commissions of such importance and prestige. He well exploited the situation, and remained almost exclusively in the service of Julius and his successor Leo X. At the time, he painted "a series of frescoes in the papal apartments" as well as those of the "Stanza della Segnatura, which include his vast School of Athens." [6] Similar to Michelangelo, Raphael also included the likeness of his peers in his frescos. So much so that Michelangelo (who was working on the Sistine Chapel at the time) accused Raphael of perceived plagarism and years after Raphael's death, complained in a letter that "everything he knew about art he got from me."[7]

In 1514 (following Bramante's death), he was named architect of the new St Peter's [8]. Much of his work there was altered or demolished after his death, but he designed other buildings, and for a short time was both the most important architect and painter in Rome. In 1515 he was entrusted with the preservation and recording of the Vatican collections of ancient sculpture.

After his arrival in Rome, he devoted his efforts to the great Vatican projects, although he still painted portraits of his two main patrons, the popes Julius II and his successor Leo X, the latter portrait considered one of his finest.

Sybils, fresco in the church of Santa Maria della Pace in Rome.

One of his most important papal commissions was the Raphael Cartoons (now Victoria and Albert Museum), a series of 10 cartoons for tapestries with scenes of the lives of Saint Paul and Saint Peter, intended as wall decoration for the Sistine Chapel. The cartoons were sent to Bruxelles to be sewn in the workshop of Pier van Aelst; the first three tapestries were sent to Rome in 1519. It is possible that Raphael saw the finished series before his death — they were completed in 1520 for Leo X.

Raphael, who in Rome lived in Borgo, never married, but it appears that in 1514 he was engaged to Maria Bibbiena (cardinal Medici Bibbiena's niece); she died in 1520. The other woman in his life was La Fornarina, a beauty named Margherita, the daughter of a baker (fornaro) named Francesco Luti from Siena who lived at via del Governo Vecchio. Art historians and doctors debate whether the right hand on the left breast in La Fornarina reveal a cancerous breast tumour detailed and disguised in a classic pose of love. [9] [10]

Lucretia, engraved by Raimondi after a design by Raphael.

According to Vasari, his premature death on Good Friday (April 6, 1520, his 37th birthday) was caused by a night of excessive sex with her, after which he fell into a fever and, not telling his doctors that this was its cause, was given the wrong cure, which killed him. Whatever the cause, in his acute illness Raphael had the wit to receive the last rites, and put his affairs in order. He took the care to dictate his will, in which he left sufficient funds for her care, entrusted to his loyal servant Bavera. Vasari underlines that Raphael was also born on a Good Friday, in 1483, on 27 or 28 March. At his request, he was buried in the Pantheon.

[edit] Printmaking

Raphael made no prints himself, but entered into a collaboration with Marcantonio Raimondi to produce engravings to Raphael's designs, which created many of the most famous Italian prints of the century, and was important in the rise of the reproductive print. A total of about fifty prints were made; some were copies of Raphael's paintings, but other designs were apparently created only to be made into prints. Raphael made preparatory drawings, many of which survive, for Raimondi to translate into engraving. The two most famous original prints to result from the collaboration were Lucretia and The Massacre of the Innocents. Outside Italy, reproductive prints by Raimondi and others were the main way that Raphael's art was experienced until the twentieth century.

[edit] Legacy

The inscription in his marble sarcophagus, a distichon written by Pietro Bembo, reads: "Ille hic est Raffael, timuit quo sospite vinci, rerum magna parens et moriente mori." Meaning: "Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be outdone while he lived, and when he died, feared herself to die."

Raphael was highly admired by his contemporaries. When compared to Michelangelo and Titian, he was sometimes considered inferior; at the same time, it was maintained that none of them shared all the qualities possessed by Raphael, "ease" in particular.

Resurrection of Christ.
La Fornarina.
Madonna with the Fish.
Portrait of Pope Julius II
Spasimo.
Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione.
Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Czartoryski Museum, Cracow.
Saint George.
School of Athens

[edit] Chronology of main works

[edit] Early works

[edit] Florentine period

[edit] Roman period