Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, now generally known in English as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.
Paintings by Raphael
Sistine Madonna (1512)
The Sistine Madonna, also called the Madonna di San Sisto, is an oil painting by the Italian artist Raphael. The painting was commissioned in 1512 by Pope Julius II for the church of San Sisto, Piacenza, and probably executed c. 1513–1514. The canvas was one of the last Madonnas painted by Raphael. Giorgio Vasari called it "a truly rare and extraordinary work".
The painting was moved to Dresden in 1754 and is well known for its influence in the German and Russian art scene. After World War II, it was relocated to Moscow for a decade before being returned to Dresden, where it remains.
La Fornarina (1519)
The Portrait of a Young Woman (also known as La fornarina) is a painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael, made between 1518 and 1519. It is in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini, Rome.
It is probable that the picture was in the painter's studio at his death in 1520, and that it was modified and then sold by his assistant Giulio Romano.
Madonna del Cardellino (1505)
The Madonna of the Goldfinch (Italian: Madonna del Cardellino) is an oil on wood painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael, from c. 1505–06. A 10-year restoration process was completed in 2008, after which the painting was returned to its home at the Uffizi in Florence. During the restoration, an antique copy replaced the painting in the gallery.
Raphael is considered to be a “master” of the High Renaissance, a title he shares with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. He was born in 1483 and died in 1520, living a mere thirty-seven years. Despite his relatively short lifespan, his influence was significant. He produced a vast quantity of work in a variety of media. He was active in architecture, printmaking, painting, and drawing. During the first half of his career, he spent years in Northern Italy where he was influenced by the Florentine styles he saw there, hence this part of his life is known as his Florentine Period. In 1508, he moved to Rome where he continued to work. Many of his commissions came from the Vatican, including the Apostolic Palace, and one of his most famous works, The School of Athens. Because of his relationship with the church, he and Michelangelo were fierce rivals throughout both their careers, often competing for the same commissions.
The School of Athens (1512)
The School of Athens (Italian: Scuola di Atene) is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1509 and 1511 as part of a commission by Pope Julius II to decorate the rooms now called the Stanze di Raffaello in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City.
The fresco depicts a congregation of ancient mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists, with Plato and Aristotle featured in the center. The identities of most figures are ambiguous or discernable only through subtle details or allusions; among those commonly identified are Socrates, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Heraclitus, Ibn Rushd (known as Averroes in the west) , Euclid, and Zarathustra. Additionally, Italian artists Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo are believed to be portrayed through Plato and Heraclitus, respectively. Raphael included a self-portrait beside Ptolemy. Hypatia is the only notable character who is looking directly at the viewer in the artwork.
Galatea (Raphael) (1510)
The Triumph of Galatea is a fresco completed around 1512 by the Italian painter Raphael for the Villa Farnesina in Rome.
The Farnesina was built for the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi, one of the richest men of that age. The Farnese family later acquired and renamed the villa, smaller than the more ostentatious palazzo at the other side of the Tiber. The fresco is a mythological scene of a series embellishing the open gallery of the building, a series which was inspired by the "Stanzas on the Tournament" of the poet Angelo Poliziano. In Greek mythology, the beautiful Nereid Galatea had fallen in love with the peasant shepherd Acis. Her consort, one-eyed giant Polyphemus, after chancing upon the two lovers together, lobbed an enormous pillar and killed Acis – Sebastiano del Piombo produced a fresco of Polyphemus next to Raphael's work.
The Marriage of the Virgin (Raphael) (1504)
The Marriage of the Virgin, also known as Lo Sposalizio, is an oil painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael. Completed in 1504 for the Franciscan church of San Francesco, Città di Castello, the painting depicts a marriage ceremony between Mary and Joseph. It changed hands several times before settling in 1806 at the Pinacoteca di Brera.
In the later years of the 15th century, patrons in Citta di Castello sent three commissions to Raphael's teacher Pietro Perugino which, in Perugino's absence, were completed by Raphael. The Marriage of the Virgin, featuring the theme of the Marriage of the Virgin, was the last of these. Evidently inspired by one of Perugino's paintings, also known as Marriage of the Virgin, Raphael finished his own work, according to the date placed next to his signature, in 1504.
Disputation of the Holy Sacrament (1509)
The Disputation of the Sacrament (Italian: La disputa del sacramento), or Disputa, is a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1509 and 1510 as the first part of Raphael's commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms that are now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. At the time, this room was known as the Stanza della Segnatura, and was the private papal library where the supreme papal tribunal met.
In the painting, Raphael has created a scene spanning both heaven and earth. Above, Christ is surrounded by an aureole, flanked by the Blessed Virgin Mary and John the Baptist to his right and left (an arrangement known as the Deësis). Other various biblical figures such as Peter (far left, holding keys), Adam (far left, bared chest), John the Evangelist (left, writing), King David (left, holding lyre), Saint Lawrence (left, wearing purple), Judas Maccabeus (right, wearing gold armor), Stephen (right, wearing green), Moses (right, with horns of light and holding the Ten Commandments), James the Elder (right, wearing white), Abraham (right, holding knife), and Paul (far right, holding book and sword) are to the sides. God the Father sits above them all in the golden light of heaven and adored by angels, blessing with his right hand and holding the Earth in his left. Below Christ's feet is the Holy Spirit in the typical form of a dove, to whose sides are books of the four Gospels held open by putti.
Alba Madonna (1511)
The Alba Madonna is a tondo (circular) oil on wood transferred to canvas painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael, created c. 1511, depicting Mary, Jesus, and John the Baptist in a typical Italian countryside.
After a century and a half in Italy, it was in the collection of the Dukes of Alba in Spain until 1836, when it was sold to Nicholas I of Russia, and it became one of the highlights of the Imperial Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Clandestinely sold to Andrew W. Mellon by the government of the Soviet Union in 1931, it has been held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., since 1937.
La velata (1513)
La velata, or La donna velata ("The woman with the veil"), is a well known portrait by the Italian Renaissance painter Raffaello Sanzio, more commonly known as Raphael. The subject of the painting appears in another portrait, La Fornarina, and is traditionally identified as the fornarina (bakeress) Margherita Luti, Raphael's Roman mistress.
As usual with Raphael, the subject's clothing is chosen and painted with close attention; here it is strikingly opulent.
Transfiguration (Raphael) (1518)
The Transfiguration is the last painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael. Cardinal Giulio de Medici – who later became Pope Clement VII (in office: 1523–1534) – commissioned the work, conceived as an altarpiece for Narbonne Cathedral in France; Raphael worked on it in the years preceding his death in 1520. The painting exemplifies Raphael's development as an artist and the culmination of his career. Unusually for a depiction of the Transfiguration of Jesus in Christian art, the subject is combined with the next episode from the Gospels (the healing of a possessed boy) in the lower part of the painting.
From the late 16th century until the early 20th century, various commentators regarded it as the most famous oil painting in the world.
Madonna del Granduca (1506)
The Madonna del Granduca is a Madonna painting by the Italian renaissance artist Raphael. It was probably painted in 1505, shortly after Raphael had arrived in Florence. The influence of Leonardo da Vinci, whose works he got to know there, can be seen in the use of sfumato. The painting belonged to Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, from whom it got its name.
Three Graces (Raphael) (1500)
The Three Graces is an oil painting by the Italian painter Raphael in the Musée Condé in Chantilly, France. The date of origin has not been positively determined, though it seems to have been painted at some point after his arrival to study with Pietro Perugino in about 1500, possibly 1503-1505. According to James Patrick in 2007's Renaissance and Reformation, the painting represents the first time that Raphael had depicted the nude female form in front and back views.
The image depicts three of the Graces of classical mythology. It is frequently asserted that Raphael was inspired in his painting by a ruined Roman marble statue displayed in the Piccolomini Library of the Siena Cathedral—19th-century art historian [Dan K] held that it was a not very skillful copy of that original—but other inspiration is possible, as the subject was a popular one in Italy. Julia Cartwright in Early Work of Raphael (2006) proposes that the painting bears far more influence of the school of Ferrara than classical sculpture, making clear that the statue was not Raphael's model.