RAPHAEL SANZIO

the school of Athens 

 raphael sanzio biography Italian Renaissance painter and architect Raphael became Perugino's apprentice in 1504. Living in Florence from 1504 to 1507, he began painting a series of "Madonnas." In Rome from 1509 to 1511, he painted the Stanza della Segnatura ("Room of the Signatura") frescoes located in the Palace of the Vatican. He later painted another fresco cycle for the Vatican, in the Stanza d'Eliodoro ("Room of Heliodorus"). In 1514, Pope Julius II hired Raphael as his chief architect. Around the same time, he completed his last work in his series of the "Madonnas," an oil painting called the Sistine Madonna. Raphael died in Rome on April 6, 1520. https://www.biography.com/artist/raphael Raphael was born Raffaello Sanzio on April 6, 1483, in Urbino, Italy. At the time, Urbino was a cultural center that encouraged the Arts. Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi, was a painter for the Duke of Urbino, Federigo da Montefeltro. Giovanni taught the young Raphael basic painting techniques and exposed him to the principles of humanistic philosophy at the Duke of Urbino’s court.  In 1494 when he was 11 Giovanna died, Raphael then took over his father workshop.

In 1504, Raphael left his apprenticeship with Perugino and moved to Florence, where he was heavily influenced by the works of the Italian painters Fra Bartolommeo, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Masaccio. To Raphael, these innovative artists had achieved a whole new level of depth in their composition. By closely studying the details of their work, Raphael managed to develop an even more intricate and expressive personal style than was evident in his earlier paintings.

From 1504 through 1507, Raphael produced a series of "Madonnas," which extrapolated on da Vinci's works. Raphael's experimentation with this theme culminated in 1507 with his painting, La belle jardinière. That same year, Raphael created his most ambitious work in Florence, the Entombment, which was evocative of the ideas that Michelangelo had recently expressed in his Battle of Cascina.

      On April 6, 1520, Raphael’s 37th birthday, he died suddenly and unexpectedly of mysterious causes in Rome, Italy. He had been working on his largest painting on canvas, The Transfiguration (commissioned in 1517), at the time of his death. When his funeral mass was held at the Vatican, Raphael's unfinished Transfiguration was placed on his coffin stand. Raphael’s body was interred at the Pantheon in Rome, Italy.

Following his death, Raphael's movement toward Mannerism influenced painting styles in Italy’s advancing Baroque period. Celebrated for the balanced and harmonious compositions of his "Madonnas," portraits, frescoes and architecture, Raphael continues to be widely regarded as the leading artistic figure of Italian High Renaissance classicism.

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"When one is painting one does not think" I think what he meant is when one paints that they paint anything that comes to mind, they don't think about it.

I chose this painting by Raphael because it was very interesting to me how he painted this, did you know that Plato and Aristotle, the colors that they wore represents them, blue for water and the brown for earth. It has so much history behind every detail from bottom to top. In the painting it looks like they are engaging in a conversation and there are different aspects going on.