Raphael

Raphael ( Raffaello Sanzio or Santi (1483–1520)). High Renaissance Urbino-born architect and painter of great distinction. Trained by his father, Giovanni Santi (d. 1494), and Pietro Perugino (1445/50–1523), whom he later assisted and soon surpassed, one of his early paintings. The Marriage of the Virgin (1504—far superior to Perugino's version of the same subject), depicts a polygonal domed building indicating a mature understanding of architecture, notably centrally planned buildings. Moving to Rome in 1508, he was commissioned by Pope Julius II (1503–13) to decorate the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, including The School of Athens showing the ancient philosophers in an architectural setting that is a masterpiece of perspective, and evokes Antique Classicism.

His first architectural foray was the Church of Sant'Eligio degli Orefici, Rome (from c.1511, with later dome by Peruzzi, the whole rebuilt by Ponzio in C17). This was followed by the Mortuary Chapel of Agostino Chigi in Santa Maria del Pòpolo, Rome (from 1512), a centrally planned work of great authority owing its present appearance to Bernini, who completed it (1652–6). The Palazzo Pandolfini, Florence (begun c.1518), merged the Florentine style of the Palazzo Strozzi with the Roman style as epitomized in Bramante's ‘House of Raphael’ (Palazzo Caprini), and indeed it was from Bramante that Raphael took his precedents. In turn, his own buildings, though few in number, were soon recognized as exemplars as significant as Antique remains and the works of Bramante. Appointed Superintendent of Roman Antiquities by the Medici Pope Leo X (1513–21), in 1515, he may have been behind proposals to record all Roman ruins and restore some. The Villa Madama, which he began building near Rome (c.1516) for Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, the future Pope Clement VII (1523–34), is ample evidence of his feeling for Antiquity, notably in the loggia facing the garden, and aspects of the villa were derived from recently discovered vaults of the Domus Aurea (Golden House) of Nero and the so-called thermae of Titus, as well as from Pliny's description of his Laurentine villa. Embellished with reliefs of stucco and painted grotesques by Raphael's assistants (including Giulio Romano), the ensemble (though only partly completed) was an authoritative evocation of Antique interior décor. After Bramante's death Raphael was appointed magister operis (Master of the Works) of St Peter's, and proposed a basilican version of Bramante's plan.

Bibliography

Cable (1981a);
Chastel (1959, 1988);
C. Frommel et al. (1984);
Heydenreich (1996);
Lotz (1997);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
S. Ray (1974);
Jane Turner (1996);
Tafuri (1966);
R. Weiss (1969);
Wittkower (1982, 1998)