Raphael

Timeline: The High Renaissance

Italian in full RAFFAELLO SANZIO (b. April 6, 1483, Urbino, Duchy of Urbino [Italy]--d. April 6, 1520, Rome, Papal States [Italy]), 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.

While we may term other works paintings, those of Raphael are living things; the flesh palpitates, the breath comes and goes, every organ lives, life pulsates everywhere.
-- Vasari, Lives of the Artists

Maddalena

Madonna dell Granduca
c. 1505 (110 kB); Oil on wood, 84 x 55 cm (33 x 21 1/2 in); Palazzo Pitti, Florence

St. George Fighting the Dragon
1504-06 (220 kB); Oil on wood, 28.5 x 21.5 cm (11 1/8 x 8 3/8 in); National Gallery of Art, Washington

St. George Fighting the Dragon
1505 (180 kB); Oil on wood, 30 x 26 cm (12 x 10 1/4 in); Musee du Louvre, Paris

The small Cowper Madonna
c. 1505 (120 kB); Oil on wood, 59.5 x 44 cm (23 3/8 x 17 3/8 in); National Gallery of Art, Washington

The nymph Galatea
c. 1512-14 (170 kB); Fresco, 295 x 225 cm (116 x 88 1/2 in); Villa Farnesina, Rome

Bindo Altoviti
c. 1515 (120 kB); Oil on wood, 60 x 44 cm (23 1/2 x 17 1/4 in); National Gallery of Art, Washington

Pope Leo X with two cardinals

External links and references: Wikipedia article on Raphael