Collection: Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (April 6, 1483 – April 6, 1520), 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. His father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the ruler of the small but highly cultured city of Urbino.

He died when Raphael was eleven, and Raphael seems to have played a role in managing the family workshop from this point. He probably trained in the workshop of Pietro Perugino, and was described as a fully trained "master" by 1500. He worked in or for several cities in north Italy until in 1508 he moved to Rome at the invitation of Pope Julius II, to work on the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican. He was given a series of important commissions there and elsewhere in the city, and began to work as an architect.

He was still at the height of his powers at his death in 1520. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his early death at 37, leaving a large body of work.

He studied under Giovanni Santi, Pietro Perugino, and Timoteo Viti. Among his canonical works are Madonna del Prato, Madonna of the Goldfinch, Resurrection of Christ, and Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione. He worked primarily in portrait, allegory, and portrait painting. His work is rooted in Italian Renaissance. His oeuvre falls under Renaissance.