The Art of Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520), better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop, and despite his death at 37, a large body of his work remains. 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. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. After 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. 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 (from 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.



Pope Julius II commissioned Raphael to decorate with frescoes the rooms that are now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Palace of the Vatican. It is located in the Stanza della segnatura, the first room that Raphael decorated, that portrays the four areas of human knowledge: philosophy, religion, poetry and law. The Parnassus represents poetry, ancient and Renaissance poets are centered around Apollo, who is seated on top of Mount Helicon, and nine muses.

Apollo, along with Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, inspired poets.

Two of the muses in the frescoe are reminiscent of Michaelangelo's Creation of Adam, Euterpe and the named (scroll) Sappho.

The window below the frescoe Parnassus frames the view of Mons Vaticanus, believed to be sacred to Apollo. Humanists, such as Biondo, Vegio, and Albertini, refer to the ancient-sun god of the Vatican.

It was painted in 1511 as the third part, after La disputa and The School of Athens.