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Born: 1483
Died: 1520
Summary of Raphael
Raphael created a comet’s trail of painting during the pinnacle of the Italian High Renaissance while only being alive for 37 creative and passionate years. His genuine enthusiasm for life spilled out into the canvas, where his mastery at expressing the Renaissance Humanist era’s ideas of beauty was astounding. He is regarded an equal member of the holy trinity of outstanding artists of his day, with Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Raphael’s remarkable talent as a painter, despite his brief life, was the product of years of instruction that began when he was a youngster. He earned a reputation as one of the most productive painters of his period, from his youth spent in his painter father’s studio to his adult life operating one of the largest workshops of its sort.
Raphael’s paintings were recognised as some of the greatest examples of the humanist movement of the period, which aimed to investigate man’s significance in the world via artwork that stressed absolute beauty.
Raphael not only mastered High Renaissance skills like sfumato, perspective, exact anatomical accuracy, and real emotionality and expression, but he also developed a distinct style marked by clarity, rich colour, easy composition, and grandeur.
He was also an architect, printer, and excellent draughtsman, and many of his works can still be seen at the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the largest achievement of his career. To put it another way, he was a real “Renaissance man.”
In contrast to one of his greatest competitors, Michelangelo, the artist was renowned as a man of conviviality, generally popular, and friendly, as well as a great admirer of the women. His social comfort and pleasant nature gave him an advantage over his classmates in terms of acceptability and job prospects.
Childhood
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino was born on April 6, 1483, to rich merchant family from Urbino and Colbordolo in the Marche Region, Giovanni Santi di Pietro and Magia di Battista di Nicola Ciarla. Raphael’s father worked as a painter for Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, where he was the leader of a well-known workshop, during a period when Urbino was a booming cultural centre. Raphael was the only one of his three siblings to survive childhood. Raphael’s mother died when he was nine years old in 1491, and his father remarried the following year to Bernardina, the daughter of a jeweller.
Raphael received his early instruction as a painter from his father. His father also arranged for Raphael to be put in the workshop of Italian Renaissance painter Pietro Perugino when he was eight years old, according to his biographer Giorgio Vasari’s renowned book, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. While we don’t know when his apprenticeship started, we do know he was working as an assistant in Perugino’s workshop in 1494, the year his father died.
Raphael inherited his father’s studio after Giovanni’s death, and Giovanni’s brother was named Raphael’s legal guardian. Raphael continued to work at his father’s workshop while his uncle took over the management of the studio.
Early Life
Raphael later received instruction from a court painter named Timoteo Viti in Urbino, but Perugino is often regarded as Raphael’s first major creative influence. His great skill as a painter, along with the fulfilment of his apprenticeship, earned him distinction as a real master while he was only 17 years old. In terms of style and technique, it was hard to tell the difference between Perugino’s and Raphael’s hands at the time.
Raphael’s first commission, an altarpiece dedicated to St. Nicholas of Tolentino, came in the year 1500. Andrea Baronci’s chapel in the church of St Agostino in Città di Castello, a town near Urbino, received the altarpiece. Raphael was recorded as the “Master.” despite a joint commission with Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, a friend and contemporary of his father. Unfortunately, the altarpiece was devastated in an earthquake in 1789, and only parts survive today, scattered in various museums across the world.
Raphael came to Siena in 1504 after being commissioned by the painter Pinturicchio to create designs for the frescos in the Libreria Piccolomini. He next travelled to Florence, the bustling heart of the Italian Renaissance, where he spent the following four years. During this time, he met his two main competitors, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; the three would become recognised as the core trinity of great masters of the period, despite the fact that Raphael was far younger.
Fra Bartolomeo encouraged Raphael to abandon Perugino’s delicate elegant style in favour of a more grandiose one in Florence. Leonardo da Vinci was his primary artistic inspiration, particularly his composition, use of motion to establish conversation, and revolutionary chiaroscuro and sfumato methods. Raphael started to develop his own style based on this influence, which rapidly gained acclaim for its simplicity of composition, purity of form, and aesthetic accomplishment, all of which were remarkable additions to Neoplatonic aspirations of human grandeur and Renaissance drives toward expressing beauty.
Raphael produced a number of Madonnas during this time, which encapsulated much of Leonardo’s experiments with realism and composition. His picture La belle jardinière, painted in 1507, is the most renowned example. Later that year, in his The Entombment, he made parallels to Michelangelo’s 1504 Battle of Cascina. Michelangelo was believed to have been enraged by Raphael’s ability to learn from other painters and turn that knowledge into his own unique style, prompting the temperamental artist to accuse Raphael of plagiarism.
Mid Life
Pope Julius II summoned Raphael to Rome on the advice of Donato Bramante, the first architect to create St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. For the next 12 years, it would be his adoptive home. He worked for both Pope Julius II and his successor, Pope Leo X, the son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and earned the moniker “Prince of Painters.” at this period.
Raphael began renovating Pope Julius II’s rooms at the Vatican in 1508, while Michelangelo was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This was his most important assignment to date, and it cemented his position as the preeminent painter at the Medici Court. Despite working on the frescos for the following five years, he delegated the commission’s completion to his subordinates, who worked from his designs (except for some notable exceptions).
Raphael met the financier Agostino Chigi at this period, and he became one of his most significant benefactors outside the church. Chigi’s most renowned commission was for the painting of Galatea at his Villa Farnesina in Rome, which was built by architect Baldassarre Peruzzi.
At 1513, Agostino Chigi gave Raphael his first architectural contract, the design of the Chigi Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo. He later collaborated with Bramante on the architectural design of Rome’s St Eligio degli Orefici church. Following Bramante’s death in 1514, his architectural achievements earned him the title of Architectural Commissioner of the rebuilt St Peter’s Basilica.
Raphael was also betrothed to Maria Bibbiena, Cardinal Bernardo Dovizi Bibbiena’s niece, in 1514. The Cardinal was a long-time friend and supporter, as well as a powerful figure in the Medici Court. During his papacy, he was protected by Pope Julius II, and he was a long-time friend of Giovanni de’ Medici, who eventually became Pope Leo X. Raphael is claimed to have accepted the proposal under pressure since he was already captivated by Margherita Luti, a baker’s daughter and his mistress and model.
Because of the widespread interest in Raphael’s infatuation with Margherita Luti, Maria Bibbiena died of an unexplained illness in 1520, precluding the marriage.
Margherita Luti was his great love, memorialised in Raphael’s painting La Fornarina. Because of his obsession with her, Vasari says that when Raphael was commissioned to adorn the Villa Farnesina for Agostino Chigi, his heart was not in his work. Throughout the assignment, Chigi had to arrange for the two lovers to meet in secret. Raphael’s choice of love and marriage motifs for the Villa has sparked rumours that the two were secretly wedded.
Late Life
Raphael was appointed commissioner of antiquities in Rome by Pope Leo X in 1517, with the responsibility of monitoring the restoration of antiquities. Raphael began by making an archaeological map of Rome in order to accomplish his duty. His restoration methods were distinguished from those of previous restorers by his concentration on preserving items in its original form rather than the imaginative reconstructions popular at the time.
Raphael was also commissioned by the Pope to make 10 tapestries to place on the Sistine Chapel’s walls. Raphael completed seven cartoons (full-sized preliminary sketches) that were delivered to Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a Flemish weaver, to be woven. Shortly before Raphael’s death, they were hung in the chapel.
Raphael spent his latter years in the Palazzo Caprini, a Bramante-designed mansion. During this time, he received several accolades, including the title of Groom of the Chamber, a prominent position at the Papal Court. For his service to the glory of the Catholic Church, he was also made a Knight of the Papal Order of the Golden Spur.
He also worked on a variety of architectural projects, including the beautiful Palazzo di Jacobo da Brescia for Pope Leo’s doctor. And there’s the Villa Madama, a rural retreat for Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, later Pope Clement VII, that was left incomplete when he died. The Transfiguration (1520), commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici and planned for a huge altarpiece for Narbonne Cathedral in France, was the final painting he was working on at the time of his death.
Raphael is reported to have had a workshop of more than fifty apprentices by the time he died, which was greater than any other painter at the period.
Raphael died on Good Friday, April 6, 1520, in Rome, at the age of 37. He passed away after a brief illness during which he was able to finalise his affairs and receive his last rites (the last prayers given to Catholics before death). In accordance with local custom, his body was laid in state at his house, followed by one of the biggest funeral processions of the period, culminating in a funeral mass at the Vatican.
“The true grandeur of the procession was that immense concourse of friends, of pupils, of artists, of renowned writers, of personages of every rank, who accompanied him, amidst the tears of the whole city; for the grief was general and the Pope’s Court shared in it.” wrote the French biographer Quatremère de Quincy in his History of Raphael of 1824.
Raphael requested to be buried next to Maria Bibbiena at the Pantheon in Rome in his will. “Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die.” writes Pietro Bembo, a scholar who eventually became a Cardinal, on his grave.
Although he left a substantial sum of money to his beloved Margherita Luti, little is known about what happened to her. However, there is a record of a widow named Margherita Luti entering the convent of St. Appollonia a few months after his death.
Raphael’s death is the subject of much debate, owing to Vasari’s claim that his death was caused by “excesses of love.” “he was a very amorous person, delighting much in women, and ever ready to serve them.” Vasari said. Despite the fact that these explanations have been entrenched in the popular consciousness, the cause of death of this master painter remains unknown.
In a letter to Isabella d’Este, a famous supporter of the arts, dated April 7, 1520, Pandolfo Pico predicted Raphael’s death as that of a “good man who has finished his first life, but his second life of Fame will be eternal.”
Raphael’s reputation as a master artist has been bolstered by his reputation as a gentlemanly, well-mannered man with an inborn confidence to move in courtly circles, the ability to imaginatively interpret both secular and religious commissions, and the consummate concentration and dedication to perfection.
Famous Art by Raphael
The Marriage of the Virgin
1504
The marriage of Mary and Joseph is shown in this artwork. One of the two dissatisfied rival suitors is pictured breaking his staff as Joseph sets the ring on Mary’s finger. However, Joseph’s staff is blooming, indicating the notion that while all suitors had wooden staffs, only the selected groom’s would bloom. In the backdrop, a temple built in the manner of architect Bramante may be seen. The combination of vivid colours and the expressive emotions of the characters give the picture an elegant attitude, conveying a feeling of the scene’s heavenly favour rather than a joyous temporal celebration.
The School of Athens
1509-1511
This fresco, which is also in the Stanza della Segnatura, is on the wall opposite the painting depicting the Holy Sacrament Disputation. The School of Athens, despite its name, refers to philosophers from the classical world rather than a specific school of thought. The movements of the philosophers represented in the painting have been the topic of much scholarly debate and analysis, although it’s unclear how much of their philosophy Raphael would have known.
The Transfiguration
1520
Two biblical stories are combined in this artwork. The title alludes to the account of Christ told in the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in which he led three of his followers up a mountain to reveal his real appearance, which was confirmed by the voice of God. The Miracle of the Possessed Boy is the second storey, which tells of a meeting between Jesus and his followers after the Transfiguration, when they descended the mountain only to be met by a father who asked Christ to heal his devil-possessed kid. The contrast between above and below aids in the visual presentation of these two stories.
BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)
Best for Students and a Huge Time Saver
- Raphael created a comet’s trail of painting during the pinnacle of the Italian High Renaissance while only being alive for 37 creative and passionate years.
- His genuine enthusiasm for life spilled out into the canvas, where his mastery at expressing the Renaissance Humanist era’s ideas of beauty was astounding.
- He is regarded an equal member of the holy trinity of outstanding artists of his day, with Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo.
- Raphael’s remarkable talent as a painter, despite his brief life, was the product of years of instruction that began when he was a youngster.
- He earned a reputation as one of the most productive painters of his period, from his youth spent in his painter father’s studio to his adult life operating one of the largest workshops of its sort.
- Raphael’s paintings were recognised as some of the greatest examples of the humanist movement of the period, which aimed to investigate man’s significance in the world via artwork that stressed absolute beauty.
- Raphael not only mastered High Renaissance skills like sfumato, perspective, exact anatomical accuracy, and real emotionality and expression, but he also developed a distinct style marked by clarity, rich colour, easy composition, and grandeur.
- He was also an architect, printer, and excellent draughtsman, and many of his works can still be seen at the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the largest achievement of his career.
- To put it another way, he was a real “Renaissance man.”
- In contrast to one of his greatest competitors, Michelangelo, the artist was renowned as a man of conviviality, generally popular, and friendly, as well as a great admirer of the women.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
