Raphael

Subject: Raphael Thu Sep 21, 2006 5:02 pm

Raphael

Raphael, Self Portrait

Raphael or Raffaello (April 6 1483 – April 6, 1520) was a master painter and architect of the Florentine school in the Italian High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and softness of his paintings. He was also called Raffaello Sanzio, Raffaello Santi, Raffaello da Urbino or Rafael Sanzio da Urbino.

Raphael was highly admired by his contemporaries. When compared to Michelangelo and Titian, he was sometimes considered inferior to those masters. At the same time, it was maintained that none of them shared all the qualities possessed by Raphael, "ease" in particular.

In 1504 he went to Florence, where he learned lessons from Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. He spent a large part of 4 years there (the so-called "Florentine period"), but continued to travel to and work in other places (Perugia, Urbino and perhaps also Rome). He made friends with the local painters, particularly Bartolomeo, one of those who influenced him to leave behind the thin style and graceful of the Perugino for more grandiose and powerful forms.

In 1514 he was named architect of the new St Peter's. Much of his works there were altered or demolished after his death, but he built other buildings and for a short while he was the most important architect in Rome, as well as the most important painter. In 1515 he was entrusted with the preservation and recording of the Vatican collections of ancient sculpture.

RAFFAELLO SANZIO, master painter and architect of the Italian High Renaissance. Raphael is best known for his Madonnas and for his large figure compositions in the Vatican in Rome. 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.

Subject: Re: Raphael Thu Sep 21, 2006 6:20 pm

Raphael

La Fornarina.

Raffaello, who in Rome lived in Borgo, never married, but it appears that in 1514 he was engaged to Maria Bibbiena (a cardinal's granddaughter), which was terminated by her death. The other woman to his name is "La Fornarina", a beauty named Margherita, the daughter of a baker (fornaro) named Francesco Luti from Siena who lived at via del Governo Vecchio 48. According to Vasari his premature death on Good Friday, 6 April, 1520, was caused by a night of excessive sex with her, after which he fell into a fever and, not telling his doctors that this was its cause, was given the wrong cure, which killed him. Whatever the cause, in his acute illness Raffaelo had the wit to receive the last rites, and put his affairs in order. He took the care to dictate his will in which he left sufficient funds for her care, entrusted to his loyal servant Bavera. Vasari underlines that Raphael was also born on a Good Friday, in 1483, on 27th or 28th March. As he had asked, he was buried in the Pantheon. Art historians and doctors debate whether the right hand on the left breast in La Fornarina reveal a cancerous breast tumour detailed and disguised in a classic pose of love.