Raphael mixed easily in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. Raphael became close to other regular visitors to the court: Pietro Bibbiena and Pietro Bembo, both later cardinals, were already becoming well known as writers, and would later be in Rome during Raphael's period there. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, and they became good friends. Court life in Urbino at just after this period was to become set as the model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through Baldassare Castiglione's depiction of it in his classic work The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. Growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture. įederico was succeeded by his son Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who married Elisabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the ruler of Mantua, the most brilliant of the smaller Italian courts for both music and the visual arts. In the very small court of Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. His poem to Federico shows him as keen to demonstrate awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and Early Netherlandish artists as well. The emphasis of Federico's court was more literary than artistic, but Giovanni Santi was a poet of sorts as well as a painter, and had written a rhymed chronicle of the life of Federico, and both wrote the texts and produced the decor for masque-like court entertainments. The reputation of the court had been established by Federico da Montefeltro, a highly successful condottiere who had been created Duke of Urbino by Pope Sixtus IV – Urbino formed part of the Papal States – and who died the year before Raphael was born. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region, where his father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the Duke. Thanks to the influence of art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann his work became a formative influence on Neoclassical painting, but his techniques would later be explicitly and emphatically rejected by groups such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.īackground Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father Christ supported by two angels, c. Raphael, The School of Athens Raphael, Cardinal and Theological Virtues, 1511Īfter his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. After his early years in Rome, much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504–1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two popes and their close associates. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his early death at 37, leaving a large body of work. He was still at the height of his powers at his death in 1520. He was given a series of important commissions there and elsewhere in the city, and began to work as an architect. He worked in or for several cities in north Italy until in 1508 he moved to Rome at the invitation of Pope Julius II, to work on the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican. He trained in the workshop of Perugino, and was described as a fully trained "master" by 1500. He died when Raphael was eleven, and Raphael seems to have played a role in managing the family workshop from this point. His father was court painter to the ruler of the small but highly cultured city of Urbino. Together with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. ə l, ˈ r eɪ f i-, ˌ r ɑː f aɪ ˈ ɛ l/ RAF-ee-əl, RAY-fee-, RAH-fy- EL), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino ( Italian: March 28 or April 6, 1483 – April 6, 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael ( UK: / ˈ r æ f eɪ.
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