Raphael

The Italian painter and architect Raphael (1483-1520) was the supreme representative of Italian High Renaissance classicism.

Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael, was born on April 6, 1483, in Urbino. His father, Giovanni Santi, was a painter and doubtless taught Raphael the rudiments of technique. Santi died when his son was 11 years old. Raphael's movements before 1500, when he joined the workshop of Perugino, are obscure, but he evidently fully absorbed the 15th-century classicism of Piero della Francesca's paintings and of the architecture of the Ducal Palace at Urbino and the humanist tradition of the court.

During his 4 years with Perugino, Raphael's eclectic disposition and remarkable ability to assimilate and adapt borrowed ideas within a very personal style were already apparent. Many works of this period, such as the Mond Crucifixion (1502/1503), are in stylistic detail almost indistinguishable from Perugino's gentle sweetness, but they have an inherent clarity and harmony lacking in Perugino's work. Raphael's last painting before moving to Florence, the Marriage of the Virgin (1504), is primarily modeled on Perugino's version of the same subject, but the compositional design is reinterpreted with greater spatial sensitivity, the figures are more accurately built, and the dramatic significance is transmitted without the artificiality of pose and gesture of the prototype.

Florentine Period

When Raphael arrived in Florence late in 1504, it must have been evident to him that his Peruginesque style was dated and provincial compared with the recent innovations of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. It was to the latter's work that he was temperamentally more attracted, and during the next 3 years he executed a series of Madonnas that adapted and elaborated compositions and ideas of Leonardo's, culminating in La Belle jardinie‧re (1507). Here Raphael's own artistic personality was somewhat submerged in his fervent examination of the principles of Leonardesque design, modeling, and expressive depth. Raphael adopted Leonardo's sfumato modeling and characteristic pyramidal composition, yet the essential sense of clarity deriving from his 15th-century classical background was not undermined.

It was principally, however, Michelangelo's Battle of Cascina rather than Leonardo's companion piece, the Battle of Anghiari, that provided the dramatic ideas used by Raphael in his most ambitious Florentine work, the Entombment (1507). But perhaps unable yet to understand entirely the imaginative power of Michelangelo's works from which he borrowed, Raphael here failed to combine the figures, expressions, and emotions with the unforced balance and harmony of his later narrative works.

Stanza della Segnatura

Raphael left for Rome in 1508 and seems to have been at work in the Vatican Stanze by early 1509. Pope Julius II's enlightened patronage stimulated the simultaneous creation of the two greatest High Renaissance fresco cycles: Michel-angelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling and Raphael's Stanza della Segnatura. Whereas Michelangelo's frescoes are a masterpiece of titanic creative imagination, Raphael's are the epitome of classical grandeur and harmony, disciplined in overall conception, artistic thought, and clarity of individual compositions and figures.

The theme of the Stanza della Segnatura (completed in 1511), eminently suited to Raphael's thoughtful humanism, is divinely inspired human intellect in four spheres: theology, poetry, philosophy, and law. The earliest of the principal scenes to be painted, the Disputa‧ (representing Theology), shows Raphael still developing from his Florentine style in the light of the enormous challenge of the stanza: never before had he undertaken a decorative scheme on this scale. It is not until the so-called School of Athens (representing Philosophy), the zenith of pure High Renaissance culture, that Raphael reaches complete, independent artistic maturity.

The disposition of each figure in this great fresco is so precisely calculated as, paradoxically, to achieve the impression of absolute freedom. The ingenuity with which the grand, harmonious space is mapped out by the figures, emphasized by the superbly rich Bramantesque architecture behind, is concealed by the overall compositional balance and the monumentally calm atmosphere. The compositional lines and the distant arch focus attention on the two central figures, which set the tone of the painting in their expressive contrast: the idealist Plato points heavenward, while Aristotle, the realist, gestures flatly toward the ground. Around them are grouped many other classical philosophers and scientists, each indicating clearly by expression and gesture the character of his intellect—yet never obtrusively, for detail is throughout subordinated to the total balanced grandeur of effect.

Stanza d'Eliodoro

Divine intervention on behalf of the Church was the theme of the Stanza d'Eliodoro (decorated between 1511 and 1514). This subject gave Raphael greater scope for dynamic composition and movement, and the influence of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, completed in 1512, is noticeable. Compositional unity is achieved in Raphael's Expulsion of Heliodorus by the balance of emotional and expressive contrasts. This fresco and the Liberation of St. Peter, a brilliant display of the dramatic possibilities of unusual light sources, witness the beginnings in Raphael's work of expansion away from the dignity and purity of the School of Athens.

During the progress of the second stanza Julius II died. He was succeeded in 1513 by Leo X, who appears in the Repulsion of Attila, the last of the Stanza d'Eliodoro frescoes, executed primarily by Raphael's pupils. At this stage Raphael's assistants began to play an increasingly important role in the production of work to his designs, partly because Leo X's dispatch of Michelangelo to work on a Medici project in Florence left Raphael undisputedly the major artist in Rome.

Late Paintings

Commissions of all sorts poured into Raphael's workshop during the last 6 years of his life. The frescoes in the Stanza dell'Incendio (1514-1517) were based on his design but executed almost entirely by assistants, as was the fresco and stucco decoration of the Vatican loggias (1517-1519).

The monumental cartoons (in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London) depicting the lives of Saints Peter and Paul, the decoration (begun 1519) of the Villa Farnesina in Rome, and Raphael's largest canvas, the Transfiguration (commissioned in 1517 but incomplete at his death), all show a new dynamism and expressiveness. The cartoons were sent to Flanders to be worked into tapestries for the Sistine Chapel and were partly responsible for the dissemination of Raphael's late style, with its emphasis on gesture and movement, throughout Europe.

His Portraits

In portraiture Raphael's development follows the same pattern. His earliest portraits closely resemble those of Perugino, whereas in Florence Leonardo's Mona Lisa was a basic influence, as can be seen in the portraits of Agnolo and Maddalena Doni (1505). Raphael adapted Leonardo's majestic design as late as 1517 in the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, which, like most of his finest portraits, is of a close friend. Castiglione is portrayed with great psychological subtlety, a gentle, scholarly face perfectly suited to the man, who in The Courtier defined the qualities of the ideal gentleman. Descriptions of Raphael's urbane good humor and courteous behavior in fact recall the very qualities that Castiglione wished to find in his perfect courtier.

His Architecture

So Bramantesque is the architecture of the School of Athens that it seems probable that Raphael was working with Donato Bramante as early as 1509, perhaps in preparation for his succession to the post of capomastro of the rebuilding of St. Peter's after Bramante's death in 1514. During the next 6 years, however, progress on St. Peter's was very slow, and his only contribution seems to have been the projected addition of a nave to Bramante's centrally planned design.

As early as the Marriage of the Virgin (1504), Raphael's painted architecture shows the pure classical spirit epitomized in Bramante's Tempietto at St. Pietro in Montorio, Rome (1502). This same unadorned structural clarity characterizes Raphael's first architectural work, the chapellike St. Eligio degli Orefici, Rome, designed in collaboration with Bramante (1509). The Chigi Chapel in St. Maria del Popolo, Rome (ca. 1512-1513), however, shows a much more ornate decorative idiom, although structurally it is almost identical with S. Eligio. A similar development in richness of texture and detailing can be seen between Raphael's two Roman palaces. The Palazzo Vidoni-Caffarelli is directly dependent on Bramante's so-called House of Raphael, but the richly ornamented facade decoration of the Palazzo Branconio dell'Aquila (ca. 1520; destroyed) is essentially unstructural. As in Raphael's last paintings, the tendency in these late architectural projects is toward a form of mannerism and away from the serene classicism of Bramante.

At the time of his death in Rome on Good Friday, 1520, at the age of 37, Raphael's art was developing in new directions, paralleled in his own very different way by Michelangelo in his Medici Chapel sculptures. The zenith of classical harmony and grandeur, reached about 1510, had passed, and it was left to Raphael's pupils to interpret and exploit the trends toward mannerism in the last works of their great master.

Further Reading

Studies of Raphael in English are limited. An important monograph in English is Oskar Fischel, Raphael (1948). John Pope-Hennessy, Raphael (1970), an excellent introduction to Raphael's art, concentrates on his working methods and reproduces many drawings and large details. See also Ettore Camesasca, All the Paintings of Raphael (1963). A fine specialized study is John Shearman, Raphael's Cartoons in the Royal Collection and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (1972). Sydney Freedberg, Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and Florence (1961), is a very useful survey of the period in general. □

Raphael ( Raffaello Sanzio) (b Urbino, 6 Apr. [or less likely 28 Mar.] 1483; d Rome, 6 Apr. 1520). Italian painter, draughtsman, architect, and designer, the artist who most completely expresses the ideals of the High Renaissance. He was the son of the painter and writer Giovanni Santi, through whom he must have gained early familiarity with the humanist court of Federico da Montefeltro. This cultured background stood him in good stead throughout his career, for unlike many artists he was renowned for his social poise. Vasari says that ‘ Raphael came to be of great help to his father in the numerous works that Giovanni executed in the state of Urbino’, but Santi died in 1494, when Raphael was only 11, and nothing is documented about his training. Presumably he did receive his first lessons in art from his father, and it has been suggested that he was subsequently a pupil of Timoteo Viti (1469–1523), a local painter, but the overwhelming influence on his early work was Perugino. Raphael took from him not only general qualities such as sweetness of expression and elegance of drawing, but also such characteristic details as daintily crooked little fingers and wispy background trees. According to Vasari, Raphael was Perugino's pupil, but this is perhaps not strictly true. He was highly precocious and is documented as an independent artist (described as ‘magister’—master) in 1500, when he was only 17; his close contact with Perugino seems to have come a little later (c.1502–3), when he was probably his colleague rather than assistant. By the time he was 21 he had already outstripped Perugino, as is clearly seen by comparing Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin (1504, Brera, Milan) with Perugino's slightly earlier painting of the same subject (Mus. B.-A., Caen). The two compositions are closely similar in many ways, but Raphael far surpasses Perugino in lucidity and grace.

In his early career Raphael had commissions from various places in Umbria. From 1504 to 1508 he spent much of his time in Florence, and these years are usually referred to as his Florentine period, although he never took up permanent residence in the city. The experience of Florence greatly affected his art; he moved away from Perugino's manner and his work became grander and more sophisticated under the inspiration of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and also Fra Bartolommeo (whose ‘pleasing manner of colouring’ is cited by Vasari as an influence). To this period belong some of Raphael's most celebrated depictions of the Virgin and Child (Madonna of the Meadow, 1505, KH Mus., Vienna). In these and his paintings of the Holy Family he showed his developing mastery of composition and expression (from Leonardo he particularly learned how to group figures fluently and compactly). He paints the sacred figures as splendid, healthy human beings, but with a serenity, a sense of some deep inner integrity, that removes any doubt as to the holiness of the subject. This sense of well-being distinguishes the art of Raphael from the more disturbingly intellectual work of Leonardo or the overwhelmingly powerful creations of Michelangelo, and evidently reflects his own balanced nature. Unlike his two great contemporaries, he was not a solitary genius but a sociable and approachable figure, whom Vasari describes as ‘so gentle and so charitable that even animals loved him’. He must, however, have had considerable toughness to produce the large amount of work he did in a short lifetime.

In 1508 Raphael moved to Rome, where Pope Julius II ( Giuliano della Rovere) entrusted him with the fresco decoration of the Stanza della Segnatura, one of a suite of rooms he was having remodelled in the Vatican. It is not known how Raphael (still only 25) came to the attention of the pope, but he was perhaps recommended by Bramante, who was a distant relative. Raphael had never before worked on a project of such size and prestige and he had little experience in fresco, but he fulfilled the commission triumphantly and he spent most of the rest of his career in the service of Julius and his successor Leo X ( Giovanni de' Medici). The Stanza della Segnatura was probably used by Julius as his private library and its decoration is based on a complex theological programme concerning the relationship between classical learning and Christian thought. On one main wall, in the celebrated painting known as The School of Athens, are shown the great thinkers of the ancient world, led by Plato and Aristotle, arranged in a majestic architectural setting, a masterpiece of perspective drawing. Opposite, in the painting called the Disputà (the Disputation over the Sacrament), the Doctors of the Church adore the Sacrament, while above them the Trinity is surrounded by the saints and martyrs.

After the completion of the Stanza della Segnatura in 1511 or 1512 Raphael was entrusted with decorating three adjacent rooms in the Vatican, but by the time he had completed the first of these—the Stanza d'Eliodoro—in 1514, his services were so much in demand that he had to leave the execution of his work increasingly to assistants (of whom Giulio Romano was the most distinguished). The cartoons for his tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (1515–16, Royal Coll., on loan to V&A, London), for example, rank among his noblest designs, but probably little of the actual brushwork is from his own hand (for the tapestries woven from them see Brussels tapestries and Royal Collection). In the Stanze and the cartoons Raphael showed a prodigious ability to arrange groups of varied figures into grandly harmonious compositions and—like Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling—these works have had a profound and enduring influence on the whole European tradition of history painting.

Apart from Julius II and Leo X, Raphael's most important patron in Rome was the enormously wealthy Agostino Chigi. Raphael's work for him included fresco decoration at his villa (now known as the Villa Farnesina), just outside the city walls of Rome, and the design of his burial chapel in the church of S. Maria del Popolo. Most of the work at the Farnesina was carried out by assistants, but the celebrated Galatea (c.1512) was painted by Raphael himself. For the Chigi Chapel (begun c.1512) he designed the entire scheme, comprising architecture, sculpture, painting, mosaic, stuccowork, and marble inlay. The richness of effect was an important source for similar works in the Baroque era, and it is fitting that the chapel (left unfinished when Chigi and Raphael died within a week of each other in 1520) was completed by Bernini.

In addition to his great decorative schemes, Raphael painted many portraits and it is in these that the quality of his own workmanship in his later years is best seen. They rival Leonardo in subtlety of characterization and Titian in richness of colouring, show great inventiveness in creating psychological situations, and provide a remarkable record of the intellectual circles in which he moved (Baldassare Castiglione, c.1515, Louvre, Paris). His portrait of Julius II (1511, NG, London) established a type for papal portraits that endured for about two centuries. Other important works from his Roman period that are largely from his own hand are the Sistine Madonna (c.1512–14, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), his most famous painting of the Virgin and Child, and the great altarpiece of the Transfiguration (Pinacoteca, Vatican), on which he was working at his death, and which—in its agitated movement and emotion—is regarded as one of the wellsprings of the Mannerist style. From about 1512 he began to work as an architect, and after the death of Bramant in 1514 he was placed in charge of the rebuilding of St Peter's. Raphael ranks second only to him among High Renaissance architects, but it is difficult to appreciate his status, as little of his work survives as he designed it. His huge workload increased further in 1517 when Leo X appointed him Rome's superintendent of antiquities, in which capacity he planned a detailed survey of the city's ancient monuments.

Vasari says that Raphael's early death from fever (evidently on his 37th birthday) ‘plunged the entire papal court into grief’. He was rich, famous, and honoured, and his influence was widely spread even in his lifetime through the prints of Marcantonio Raimondi. His posthumous reputation was even greater, for until well into the 19th century he was regarded by almost all critics as the greatest painter who had ever lived—the artist who expressed the basic doctrines of the Christian Church through figures that have a physical beauty worthy of the antique. He became the ideal of all academies and Reynolds said of him: ‘It is from his having taken so many models that he became himself a model for all succeeding painters: always imitating and always original.’ In the later 19th century and particularly the 20th century there was a reaction against such adulation. The modern world likes its artistic heroes to show human frailties and preferably to be eccentrics or rebels, and Raphael—with his obliging personality, efficient management skills, and career of unbroken success—is completely lacking in this kind of appeal. Nevertheless, although his reputation is slightly less exalted than it once was, he remains one of the brightest beacons of European art.

Raphael ( Raffaello Santi) (1483–1520). Italian painter, draughtsman, architect, and designer, the artist who most completely expresses the ideals of the High Renaissance. He was born in Urbino, the son of the painter and writer Giovanni Santi, through whom he must have gained early familiarity with the humanist court of Federico da Montefeltro. This cultured background stood him in good stead throughout his career, for unlike many artists he was renowned for his social poise. Vasari says that ‘Raphael came to be of great help to his father in the numerous works that Giovanni executed in the state of Urbino’, but Santi died in 1494, when Raphael was only 11, and the overwhelming influence on his early work was Perugino. He took from him not only general qualities such as sweetness of expression and elegance of drawing, but also such characteristic details as daintily crooked little fingers and wispy background trees. According to Vasari, Raphael was Perugino's pupil, but this is perhaps not strictly true. He was highly precocious and working as an independent artist by 1500; his close contact with Perugino seems to have come a little later (c.1502–3), when he was probably his colleague rather than assistant. By the time he was 21 he had already outstripped Perugino, as is clearly seen by comparing Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin (1504, Brera, Milan) with Perugino's slightly earlier painting of the same subject (Mus. B.-A., Caen). The two compositions are closely similar in many ways, but Raphael far surpasses Perugino in lucidity and grace.

In his early career Raphael had commissions from various places in Umbria. From 1504 to 1508 he spent much of his time in Florence, and these years are usually referred to as his Florentine period, although he never took up permanent residence in the city. The experience of Florence greatly affected his art; he moved away from Perugino's manner and his work became grander and more sophisticated under the inspiration of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and also Fra Bartolommeo (whose ‘pleasing manner of colouring’ is cited by Vasari as an influence). To this period belong some of Raphael's most celebrated depictions of the Virgin and Child (Madonna of the Meadow, 1505, KH Mus., Vienna). In these and his paintings of the Holy Family he showed his developing mastery of composition and expression (from Leonardo he particularly learned how to group figures fluently and compactly). He paints the sacred figures as splendid, healthy human beings, but with a serenity, a sense of some deep inner integrity, that removes any doubt as to the holiness of the subject. This sense of well-being distinguishes the art of Raphael from the more disturbingly intellectual work of Leonardo or the overwhelmingly powerful creations of Michelangelo, and evidently reflects his own balanced nature. Unlike his two great contemporaries, he was not a solitary genius but a sociable and approachable figure, whom Vasari describes as ‘so gentle and so charitable that even animals loved him’. He must, however, have had considerable toughness to produce the large amount of work he did in a short lifetime.

In 1508, Raphael moved to Rome, where Pope Julius II ( Giuliano della Rovere) entrusted him with the fresco decoration of the Stanza della Segnatura, one of a suite of rooms he was having remodelled in the Vatican. It is not known how Raphael (still only 25) came to the attention of the pope, but he was perhaps recommended by Bramante, who was a distant relative. Raphael had never before worked on a project of such size and prestige and he had little experience in fresco, but he fulfilled the commission triumphantly and he spent most of the rest of his career in the service of Julius and his successor Leo X ( Giovanni de' Medici). The Stanza della Segnatura was probably used by Julius as his private library and its decoration is based on a complex theological programme concerning the relationship between classical learning and Christian thought. On one main wall, in the celebrated painting known as The School of Athens, are shown the great thinkers of the ancient world, led by Plato and Aristotle, arranged in a majestic architectural setting, a masterpiece of perspective drawing. Opposite, in the painting called the Disputà (the Disputation over the Sacrament), the doctors of the church adore the Sacrament, while above them the Trinity is surrounded by the saints and martyrs. After the completion of the Stanza della Segnatura in 1511 or 1512 Raphael was entrusted with decorating three adjacent rooms in the Vatican, but by the time he had completed the first of these—the Stanza d'Eliodoro—in 1514, his services were so much in demand that he had to leave the execution of his work increasingly to assistants (of whom Giulio Romano was the most distinguished). The cartoons for tapestries of the Acts of the Apostles for the Sistine Chapel (1515–16, Royal Coll., on loan to V&A, London), for example, rank among his noblest designs, but probably little of the actual brushwork is from his own hand. In the Stanze and the cartoons Raphael showed a prodigious ability to arrange groups of varied figures into grandly harmonious compositions and—like Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling—these works have had a profound and enduring influence on the whole European tradition of history painting.

Apart from Julius II and Leo X, Raphael's most important patron in Rome was the enormously wealthy Agostino Chigi. Raphael's work for him included fresco decoration at his villa (now known as the Villa Farnesina), just outside the city walls of Rome, and the design of his burial chapel in the church of S. Maria del Popolo. Most of the work at the Farnesina was carried out by assistants, but the celebrated Galatea (c.1512) was painted by Raphael himself. For the Chigi Chapel (begun c.1512) he designed the entire scheme, comprising architecture, sculpture, painting, mosaic, stuccowork, and marble inlay. The richness of effect was an important source for similar works in the Baroque era, and it is fitting that the chapel (left unfinished when Chigi and Raphael died within a week of each other in 1520) was completed by Bernini. In addition to his great decorative schemes, Raphael painted many portraits and it is in these that the quality of his own workmanship in his later years is best seen. They rival Leonardo in subtlety of characterization and Titian in richness of colouring, show great inventiveness in creating psychological situations, and provide a remarkable record of the intellectual circles in which he moved (Baldassare Castiglione, c.1515, Louvre, Paris). His portrait of Julius II (1511, NG, London) established a type for papal portraits that endured for about two centuries. Other important works from his Roman period that are largely from his own hand are the Sistine Madonna (c.1512–14, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), his most famous painting of the Virgin and Child, and the great altarpiece of the Transfiguration (Pinacoteca, Vatican), on which he was working at his death, and which—in its agitated movement and emotion—is regarded as one of the wellsprings of the Mannerist style. From about 1512 he began to work as an architect, and after the death of Bramante in 1514 he was placed in charge of the rebuilding of St Peter's. Raphael ranks second only to him among High Renaissance architects, but it is difficult to appreciate his status, as little of his work survives as he designed it. His huge workload increased further in 1517 when Leo X appointed him Rome's superintendent of antiquities, in which capacity he planned a detailed survey of the city's ancient monuments.

Vasari says that Raphael's early death from fever (on his thirty-seventh birthday) ‘plunged the entire papal court into grief’. He was rich, famous, and honoured, and his influence was widely spread even during his own lifetime through the engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi. His posthumous reputation was even greater, for until well into the 19th century he was regarded by almost all critics as the greatest painter who had ever lived—the artist who expressed the basic doctrines of the Christian Church through figures that have a physical beauty worthy of the Antique. He became the ideal of all Academies and Reynolds said of him: ‘It is from his having taken so many models that he became himself a model for all succeeding painters: always imitating and always original.’ In the later 19th century and particularly the 20th century there was a reaction against such adulation. The modern world likes its artistic heroes to show human frailties and preferably to be eccentrics or rebels, and Raphael—with his obliging personality, efficient management skills, and career of unbroken success—is completely lacking in this kind of appeal. Nevertheless, although his reputation is slightly less exalted than it once was, he remains one of the brightest beacons of European art.

Raphael (1483–1520)

A painter of the Italian Renaissance admired for the balance and harmony of his compositions, and who had a major influence on art of the later Baroque period. Born in the town of Urbino, he was the son of a painter, Giovanni Santi, who was a court painter to the Duke of Urbino, Federigo da Montefeltro. After the death of his father in 1494, the eleven-year-old Raphael took on greater responsibility for managing the Santi workshop, and quickly developed a reputation as one of the best painters in Urbino. His earliest known works are paintings done for the Church of San Nicola in the nearby town of Castello. In 1500 Raphael apprenticed to the painter Pietro Vannucci, also known as Perugino, under whom he developed a striking, expressive personal style in a series of religious paintings, including the Marriage of the Virgin, and the Mond Crucifixion. Ambitious and hardworking, he moved to Florence in 1504, and soon came under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci's paintings as well as the works of Fra Bartolommeo. The Mona Lisa of Leonardo served as a model for Raphael's portraits of Agnolo and Maddalena Doni, which he completed in 1505. In Florence, Raphael painted a series of Madonnas in which he adopted Leonardo's sfumato method of soft contours as well as Leonardo's typical pyramid composition, with complex groups of figures rising to a single point. His most famous work from this period, the Entombment, borrowed ideas from Michelangelo's painting Battle of Cascina.

In 1508 Raphael left Florence for Rome, where he was engaged by Pope Julius II to decorate a series of rooms known as the Stanza della Segnatura. These fresco paintings, which the artist completed in 1511, were based on the subjects of theology, philosophy, poetry, and law. They include The Triumph of Religion and The School of Athens, one of the most important works of the late Renaissance, in which classical philosophers gesture and pose in a setting of opulent grandeur. Over the following years Raphael also painted frescoes in the Stanza d'Eliodoro that include The Expulsion of Heliodorus, The Miracle of Bolsena, The Repulse of Attila from Rome by Leo I, and the Liberation of St. Peter. In his studio he completed a series of famous Madonnas, including the Sistine Madonna, The Madonna of the Chair, Madonna with the Fish, and the Alba Madonna.

The work he completed at the Vatican spread Raphael's name and fame throughout Italy. In Rome, he presided over one of the city's busiest and most successful workshops. Raphael hired a large staff of assistants to complete the frescoes in the Stanza dell'Incendio and the Vatican loggias between 1514 and 1519. In this period he also created a series of ten cartoons (designs) of the lives of Saint Peter and Saint Paul for tapestries that were to decorate the Sistine Chapel. These drawings were sent to workshops in Brussels, Belgium, where they helped to spread his fame and painting style to northern Europe.

In the meantime, the pope engaged Raphael as his chief architect after the death of Donato Bramante in 1514. Raphael designed chapels in Sant' Eligio degli Orefici and Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, and a small section of the new Basilica of Saint Peter. He also designed several aristocratic palaces, adopting for them the classical style of Donato Bramante, adding detailed ornaments and flourishes that would become typical of later Renaissance and Baroque architecture.

In Rome Raphael also created several masterpieces of Renaissance portraiture, including famous paintings of Baldassare Castiglione, Pope Julius II, and the latter's successor, Pope Leo X. He collaborated with Marcantonio Raimondi in his printing shop to produce such engravings as The Massacre of the Innocents and Lucretia. These inexpensive prints were made by the thousands and circulated throughout Italy, making Raphael's name and works known to commoners as well as aristocrats. His largest painting, The Transfiguration, was still unfinished in 1520, when Raphael died suddenly at a young age and of mysterious causes.

See Also: Julius II; Leo X; Leonardo da Vinci; Michelangelo Buonarroti; painting

Raphael Santi or Raphael Sanzio, Ital. Raffaello Santi or Raffaello Sanzio , 1483-1520, major Italian Renaissance painter, b. Urbino. In Raphael's work is the clearest expression of the exquisite harmony and balance of High Renaissance composition.

Early Training, Influence, and Work

Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi, painter at the court of Federigo Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, first taught him the elements of art. About six years after the death of his father (1494) he entered the workshop of Perugino , whose influence is seen in The Crucifixion and The Knight's Dream (both: National Gall., London); Coronation of the Virgin (Vatican); The Three Graces (Chantilly); and the Sposalizio (Brera, Milan). The Colonna altarpiece, representing the Madonna and Saints (Metropolitan Mus.), marks the end of the Perugian period of his work.

The five predella scenes, Agony in the Garden (Metropolitan Mus.), St. Anthony of Padua and St. Francis (both: Dulwich), Procession to Calvary (National Gall., London), and Pietà (Gardner Mus., Boston), give evidence of the new influences of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Masaccio, and, especially, Fra Bartolomeo. Studying the intricacies of anatomy, perspective, and coloring, he achieved a freer, more able, and deeper interpretation than was seen in his earlier work. In Florence (1504-8) he produced numerous Madonnas that are renowned for their sweetness of expression. His self-portrait (Uffizi) and the penetrating portraits of Angelo and Maddalena Doni (Pitti Palace) are also from this period.

Mature Work

At Rome his style matured, benefiting from Michelangelo's influence. In the Vatican, Raphael was wholly responsible for the Stanza della Segnatura (finished 1511); the two largest walls represent, respectively, the School of Athens, portraying the Greek philosophers, and the Triumph of Religion, also called Disputà. On the vault are The Flaying of Marsyas and The Temptation of Eve. The ceiling is devoted to the allegorical figures Law, Philosophy, Poetry, and Theology. Two large lunettes over the windows represent Parnassus and Jurisprudence.

In the Stanza d'Eliodoro Raphael painted (1511-14) The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, The Miracle of Bolsena, The Repulse of Attila from Rome by Leo I, and The Deliverance of St. Peter. He also designed the Incendio del Borgo and painted part of it. Other designs for the Vatican include The Battle of Ostia, The Oath of Leo III before Charlemagne, and The Victory of Constantine over Maxentius; the 52 religious subjects covering one ceiling and known as "Raphael's Bible" were executed by his pupils after his design.

Among the other paintings of his Roman period are the Madonna with the Fish (Prado); Madonna of the Chair (Pitti Palace); the Sistine Madonna (Dresden); Galatea (Farnesina); the Alba Madonna (National Gall. of Art, Washington, D.C.); and the unfinished Transfiguration, completed by Giulio Romano. Portraits of that period include Julius II, long his patron; Baldassare Castiglione (Louvre); Tommaso Inghirami (Gardner Mus., Boston); and Pope Leo X with Two Cardinals.

Other Works and Accomplishments

Having been named (1514) successor to Bramante as chief architect of the Vatican, Raphael also designed a number of churches, palaces, and mansions. For his patron, Leo X, he undertook (1518) a survey of ancient Rome showing the chief monuments. He also designed ten tapestries with themes from the Acts of the Apostles for the Sistine Chapel; seven of the designs are in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Raphael was deeply indebted to the sculpture of antiquity for his mythological and biblical figures, and in his interpretation of classical art he achieved a harmony and monumentality emulated far into the 19th cent.

Bibliography

See his complete paintings, introd. by R. Cocke (1966); complete works by M. Salmi et al. (1969); biography by L. Berti (tr. 1961); studies by A. P. Oppé (rev. ed. 1970), J. Pope-Hennessy (1970), and L. Dussler (tr. 1971).

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)

Raphael

An angel whose name means "God has healed." He first appeared in the Apocrypha, those honored but uncanonical books of the Hebrew people that were considered but not included in their Bible (i.e., the Christian Old Testament). The book of Tobit, written in the second century B.C.E. , concerns a man who was blind. Raphael was the angel sent to heal him. In the pseudepigraphical (falsely ascribed) book of Enoch it was said that: "Raphael presides over the spirits of men." In Jewish rabbinical legend of the angelic hierarchies, Raphael was the medium through which the power of Tsebaoth, or the Lord of Hosts, passed into the sphere of the sun, giving motion, heat, and brightness to it.

As one of the angels named in the ancient writings, Raphael reappears in the Kabalistic literatures of the Middle Ages. As an archangel, Raphael was identified with Hod, one of the ten sephiroth iminated by the Ein Soph (God) who implements God's creative purposes, in this case healing. He then reappears in a variety of magical operations of ceremonial magic and is one of the four angels called upon in, for example, the basic "Ritual of the Pentagram" which was taught to neophytes in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The name "Raphael" was also adopted by pioneer British astrologer Robert Cross Smith (1795-1832) whose career really marks the beginning of the modern astrological revival from the low point of astrological interest in the eighteenth century. Smith founded a successful astrological publishing house and compiled Raphael's Astronomical Ephemeris, the book of sun, moon, and planet position for each day of the year, a necessary tool for the preparation of an accurate horoscope. Since his death, the publishing house continues to publish his ephemeris which remains one of the most popular used today.

Through the nineteenth century, individual astrologers also assumed the name and operated as "Raphael." Raphael II was John Palmer (1807-1837), editor of Raphael's Sanctuary of the Astral Art (1834), Raphael III was a Mr. Medhurst, who edited the Prophetic Messenger almanac (1837-ca. 1847), Raphael IV was Mr. Wakeley (d. 1853) who wrote under the name "Edwin Raphael," and Raphael V was a Mr. Sparkes (1820-1875) who edited The Oracle (May-June 1861). Raphael VI was Robert C. Cross (1850-1923) who acquired the Raphael copyrights, including the ephemeris. Since Cross's death, a company has continued the Raphael publications.

Sources:

Christian, Paul. The History and Practice of Magic. New York: Citadel Press, 1969.

Halevi, Z'ev ben Shimon. A Kabbalistic Universe. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1977.

Lewis, James R. Astrology Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994.

Regardie, Israel. The Golden Dawn. 4 vols. Chicago: Aries Press, 1937-40. Revised ed., St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1969.

Raphael (1483–1520) ( Raphael Sanzio or Raphael Santi) Italian painter, one of the finest artists of the High Renaissance. Born in Urbino, Raphael absorbed humanism as a child. One of his most important commissions was the decoration of the four stanze (rooms) in the Vatican. He only completed two of these but the first, the Stanza della Segnatura, gave him the chance to exercise his skills to the full. The room contains two large frescos, the School of Athens and the Disputà, both of which show Raphael's mastery of perspective. After Bramante's death, he became architect to St Peter's, Rome.

http://www.christusrex.org; http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk; http://www.nga.gov

Raphael ♂ From early Christian tradition, in which it is the name of one of the archangels (see also Gabriel and Michael). It is composed of Hebrew vocabulary elements meaning ‘to heal’ and ‘God’. Raphael is not named in the canonical text of the Bible, but plays a part in the apocryphal tale of Tobias. The shorter form Rapha ‘he (God) heals’ (compare Nathaniel and Nathan) is borne by several characters in the Old Testament. The name has always been much more common in southern Europe than in Britain, and use in the English-speaking world today generally reflects southern European influence. It has also become a popular modern Hebrew name.

Raphael (1483–1520) ( Raffaello Sanzio), the most famous of the Renaissance painters. In 1508 he was summoned to Rome to decorate the Vatican ‘Stanze’ and in 1514 appointed chief architect of St Peter's. His works include the Espousals of the Virgin (1504; Brera, Milan), the Sistine Madonna, and the Madonna della Sedia (c.1513–14; Pitti, Florence).

Raphael (1483–1520) Biblical archangel who, with Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel, serves as a messenger of God. According to passages in the apocryphal Book of Tobit and the pseudigraphical Second Book of Enoch, he is one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints to God.

Raphael An archangel sent to cure Tobit of blindness (Tob. 11: 7–8) and to be the companion of Tobias, son of Tobit. The development of belief in angels (Tob. 12: 15) is a feature of literature of this period and Raphael is also mentioned in 1 Enoch (10: 7).

Raphael , archangel. He is prominent in the book of Tobit, as the companion of Tobias, as the healer of Tobit, and as the rescuer of Sara from Asmodeus. Milton made him a featured character of Paradise Lost. Feast: Sept. 29 (jointly with the other archangels).

Raphael in the Bible, one of the seven archangels in the apocryphal Book of Enoch. He is said to have ‘healed’ the earth when it was defiled by the sins of the fallen angels.

Raphael (Heb., ‘God is healing’). An angel recognized in Judaism and Christianity. Raphael appears in the Apocrypha (Tobit 12. 15 and 1 Enoch 20. 3).

Raphael ♂ (French) Biblical.

Raphael •Baal, betrayal, defrayal, portrayal •Raphael •empyreal, genial, hymeneal, peritoneal