Who is raphael sanzio da urbino

We have very little evidence of the internal working arrangements of the workshop, apart from the works of art themselves, often very difficult to assign to a particular hand. The most important figures were Giulio Romano, a young pupil from Rome only about twenty-one at Raphael's death , and Gianfrancesco Penni, already a Florentine master. They were left many of Raphael's drawings and other possessions, and to some extent continued the workshop after Raphael's death.

Penni did not achieve a personal reputation equal to Giulio's, as after Raphael's death he became Giulio's less-than-equal collaborator in turn for much of his subsequent career. Perino del Vaga, already a master, and Polidoro da Caravaggio, who was supposedly promoted from a labourer carrying building materials on the site, also became notable painters in their own right. Polidoro's partner, Maturino da Firenze, has, like Penni, been overshadowed in subsequent reputation by his partner.

Most of the artists were later scattered, and some killed, by the violent Sack of Rome in This did however contribute to the diffusion of versions of Raphael's style around Italy and beyond.

Vasari emphasises that Raphael ran a very harmonious and efficient workshop, and had extraordinary skill in smoothing over troubles and arguments with both patrons and his assistants - a contrast with the stormy pattern of Michelangelo's relationships with both. However though both Penni and Giulio were sufficiently skilled that distinguishing between their hands and that of Raphael himself is still sometimes difficult, there is no doubt that many of Raphael's later wall-paintings, and probably some of his easel paintings, are more notable for their design than their execution.

Many of his portraits, if in good condition, show his brilliance in the detailed handling of paint right up to the end of his life. Giovanni da Udine worked mostly as a stuccoist. The printmakers and architects in Raphael's circle are discussed below. It has been claimed the Flemish Bernard van Orley worked for Raphael for a time, and Luca Penni, brother of Gianfrancesco, may have been a member of the team.

After Bramante's death in , he was named architect of the new St Peter's. Most of his work there was altered or demolished after his death and the acceptance of Michelangelo's design, but a few drawings have survived. It appears his designs would have made the church a good deal gloomier than the final design, with massive piers all the way down the nave, "like an alley" according to a critical posthumous analysis by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger.

It would perhaps have resembled the temple in the background of the The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple. He designed several other buildings, and for a short time was the most important architect in Rome, working for a small circle around the Papacy. Julius had made changes to the street plan of Rome, creating several new thoroughfares, and he wanted them filled with splendid palaces.

An important building, the Palazzo Aquila for the Papal Chamberlain, was completely destroyed to make way for Bernini's piazza for St. Peter's, but drawings of the facade and courtyard remain. The facade was an unusually richly decorated one for the period, including both painted panels on the top story of three , and much sculpture on the middle one. Another building, for the Pope's doctor, the Palazzo di Jacobo da Brescia, was moved in the s but survives; this was designed to complement a palace on the same street by Bramante, where Raphael himself lived for a time.

He produced a design from which the final construction plans were completed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. Even incomplete, it was the most sophisticated villa design yet seen in Italy, and greatly influenced the later development of the genre; it appears to be the only modern building in Rome of which Palladio made a measured drawing. Only some floor-plans remain for a large palace planned for himself on the new "Via Giulia" in the Borgo, for which he was accumulating the land in his last years.

It was on an irregular island block near the river Tiber. It seems all facades were to have a giant order of pilasters rising at least two storeys to the full height of the piano nobile, "a gandiloquent feature unprecedented in private palace design". In he was given powers as "Prefect" over all antiquities unearthed entrusted within the city, or a mile outside.

Raphael wrote a letter to the Pope suggesting ways of halting the destruction of ancient monuments, and proposed a visual survey of the city to record all antiquities in an organised fashion. The Pope's concerns were not exactly the same; he intended to continue to re-use ancient masonry in the building of St Peter's, but wanted to ensure that all ancient inscriptions were recorded, and sculpture preserved, before allowing the stones to be reused.

Raphael was one of the finest draftsmen in the history of Western art, and used drawings extensively to plan his compositions. According to a near-contemporary, when beginning to plan a composition, he would lay out a large number of stock drawings of his on the floor, and begin to draw "rapidly", borrowing figures from here and there.

Over forty sketches survive for the Disputa in the Stanze, and there may well have been many more originally; over four hundred sheets survive altogether. He used different drawings to refine his poses and compositions, apparently to a greater extent than most other painters, to judge by the number of variants that survive: " This is how Raphael himself, who was so rich in inventiveness, used to work, always coming up with four or six ways to show a narrative, each one different from the rest, and all of them full of grace and well done.

For John Shearman, Raphael's art marks "a shift of resources away from production to research and development". When a final composition was achieved, scaled-up full-size cartoons were often made, which were then pricked with a pin and "pounced" with a bag of soot to leave dotted lines on the surface as a guide. He also made unusually extensive use, on both paper and plaster, of a "blind stylus", scratching lines which leave only an indentation, but no mark.

These can be seen on the wall in The School of Athens, and in the originals of many drawings. The "Raphael Cartoons", as tapestry designs, were fully coloured in a glue distemper medium, as they were sent to Brussels to be followed by the weavers. In later works painted by the workshop, the drawings are often painfully more attractive than the paintings. Most Raphael drawings are rather precise—even initial sketches with naked outline figures are carefully drawn, and later working drawings often have a high degree of finish, with shading and sometimes highlights in white.

They lack the freedom and energy of some of Leonardo's and Michelangelo's sketches, but are nearly always aesthetically very satisfying.

He was one of the last artists to use metalpoint literally a sharp pointed piece of sliver or another metal extensively, although he also made superb use of the freer medium of red or black chalk. In , 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 through , Raphael produced a series of "Madonnas," which extrapolated on da Vinci's works. 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.

In the fresco cycle, Raphael expressed the humanistic philosophy that he had learned in the Urbino court as a boy. During this same time, the ambitious painter produced a successful series of "Madonna" paintings in his own art studio. The famed Madonna of the Chair and Sistine Madonna were among them. While Raphael continued to accept commissions -- including portraits of popes Julius II and Leo X -- and his largest painting on canvas, The Transfiguration commissioned in , he had by this time begun to work on architecture.

The Pope also commissioned Raphael to design ten tapestries to hang on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Raphael managed to complete seven cartoons full sized preparatory drawings , which were sent to be woven in the workshop of Flemish weaver Pieter Coecke van Aelst.

They were hung in the chapel shortly before Raphael's death. In his later years, Raphael lived in the Palazzo Caprini, a palace designed by Bramante. During this period, he was lauded with honors including the prestigious title Groom of the Chamber , a high office at the Papal Court. He also worked on a large number of architectural projects, which included the Palazzo di Jacobo da Brescia, a magnificent palace for Pope Leo's doctor.

The last painting he was working on at the time of his death was The Transfiguration , also commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, which was intended to be for a large altarpiece for Narbonne Cathedral in France.

By the time he died, Raphael is said to have had a workshop of over fifty apprentices, which was larger than any other painter at the time. Raphael died in Rome on Good Friday, April 6, when he was only 37 years old. He died after a short illness during which he was able to put his affairs in order and receive his last rites the last prayers given to Catholics before death. In keeping with local custom his body lay in state at his home, which was followed by one of the largest funeral processions of his time, ending at the Vatican where his funeral mass was held.

His tomb bears the inscription written by Pietro Bembo, a scholar who later became a Cardinal, "Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die. Although it is known he left a large amount of money to his beloved Margherita Luti, not much is known of what became of her. There is however a record of a woman calling herself "Margherita Luti, a widow", who entered the convent of St.

Appollonia a few months after his death. Much speculation surrounds Raphael's premature death primarily due to Vasari's reference of his death being caused by the "excesses of love. In an April 7, letter from Pandolfo Pico to Isabella d'Este, a great patron of the arts, he prophesized Raphael's death as being that of a "good man who has finished his first life, but his second life of Fame will be eternal.

Gentlemanly, well-mannered with an inborn confidence to move in courtly circles, the talent to imaginatively interpret both secular and religious commissions, and the consummate concentration and dedication to perfection have all contributed to Raphael's reputation as one who reached the pinnacle of what a master artist could be.

As Vasari stated, "possessors of such rare and numerous gifts as were seen in Rafaello da Urbino, are not merely men, but mortal gods. Joshua Reynolds, first president of the Royal Academy in London, hoped students of the school would be inspired by the "divine spark of Raphael's genius" directing them to copy the great artist's drawings as part of their studies.

As painter to the papal court, his work met with high praise, and he established himself as the most favored artist in Rome. He was commissioned to paint portraits, devotional subjects, and the Pope's private rooms; he also designed tapestries. Raphael was soon placed in charge of all papal projects involving architecture, paintings, decoration, and the preservation of antiquities. His untimely death at the age of thirty-seven, Vasari said, "plunged into grief the entire papal court"; the Pope, who "wept bitterly when he died, had intended making him a Cardinal.