Raphael
1483 - 1520
Born Raffaello di Giovanni Santi, a.k.a. Raffaello Sanzio. Italian painter, architect and draughtsman, born in Urbino.
As an 11-year old Raphael is apprenticed to Perugino, where his impressive talent soon comes out. He has an uncanny hand at imitating his master. From 1504 until 1508 Raphael works in Florence and after that in Rome until his death. Here he develops his monumental style. Many of his compositions are markedly geometric.
From his Florentine period date the many Madonna's. In Rome Pope Julius II has him work on a decoration of a number of rooms in the Vatican: de Stanza della Segnatura (approx 1509, including the fresco School of Athens and the Stanza di Eliodoro (1511-14, with the Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple and The Liberation of Peter.)
Paul Leo X puts him in charge of the construction of the St Peter. In 1515 and 1516 Raphael makes designs (cartoons) for a series of tapestries in the papal private chapel with scenes from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.
Raphael, together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, ranks among the major artists of the Renaissance period. Art historians consider the year of his death, 1520 - he died at his 37th birthday in Rome – as the end of the high Renaissance.
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