RAPHAEL

(Raffaello Sanzio or Santi)

 

Raffaello’s last name appears in both spellings; however, he and his works are so famous that people know him simply as Raphael or in Italian as Raffaello. Similar to Michelangelo whose last name is Buonarotti, and Giotto, whose is Di Bondone. Raphael is famous for many Madonna and Child paintings, he did during the Italian Renaissance.

Raphael was born in Urbino on the twenty-eighth of March or the sixth of April 1483, the uncertainty derives from a tomb inscription by Pietro Bembo which states that Raphael died on the same day of the year that he was born―Good Friday. But, in 1483, Good Friday fell on twenty-eighth of March.

Raphael’s father, Giovanni, Sanzio was an artist who worked for the ruler of Urbino―Guidobaldo da Montefeltro and his wife Elisabetta Gonzaga. Giovanni taught his son the rudiments of painting and when he was old enough, he sent him to a school in Perugia. Here he was under the tutelage of Pietro Perugino, a highly regarded artist who apprenticed with Leonardo da Vinci, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Fillipino Lippi, and others.

Within a year Raphael was an artist on his own merit. His first painting, at the age of nineteen was, “The Portrait of Elisabetta Gonzaga” (1502 Oil on canvas presently at the Galleria degli Uffizi, in Florence). He painted a number of Madonna and Child canvases with equal charm. Eighteen different cities in Europe and the United States claim ownership to some of his paintings. Five are at the National Gallery of Art in Washington; D.C.: The Alba Madonna, The Niccolini―Cowper Madonna, The Small Cowper Madonna, Saint George and the Dragon, and Bindo Altoviti.

Raphael, unfortunately, for us, after a two week illness in the prime of his life at the age of thirty-seven died on his birthday in 1520, in Rome. While ill Pope Leo X visited him daily. On his tombstone are the words, “This is Raphael’s tomb. While he lived, Nature feared his victory; when he died, that it would die with him.”

One outstanding aspect of him was his ability to synthesize the styles of other artists into his own productions; thereby keeping, expressing, and emphasizing the genre of his epoch. He was a person held in very high regard by his peers. Giorgio Vasari, a painter, architect, writer, historian, and a contemporary of Raphael, wrote, “With what liberality heaven can occasionally pour out the whole wealth of its treasures, all talents and outstanding skills, into a single person is clearly evident in Raffaello Sanzio of Urbino, who stood out as much for his rare personal charisma as for his unique genius.”  Below is the Alba Madonna, a self portrait, he is in the background, and The School of Athens, and the web sites for viewing his works. At www.galleriabroghese.it, www.vatican.va, www.aberoma.com (Villa Farnese)