Raffaello Sanzio Raphael Giclée Fine Art Prints 4 of 5

The training of Raphael (1483-1520) at Urbino remains obscure. It is certain that he passed through the school of Perugino before going to Florence, where he worked from 1504 to 1508. Insight into Leonardo da Vinci's art would play a significant role in his evolution. The Madonnas and Holy Families he painted during his Florentine period testify to a precocious maturity and an already established classical style. In "The Beautiful Gardener", Raphael creates a bucolic, peaceful, familial image of the Virgin and the children united in intimate intimacy by the play of looks and gestures.

In 1508 Pope Julius II summoned him to Rome to decorate the Vatican looms. In the Stanza della Segnatura (1508-1511) he weaves philosophers, scholars and poets of all times into harmonious and monumental compositions; the following episodes, by contrast, are charged with unbridled power and dramatic tension. The artist's output is prodigious; he runs a thriving studio with numerous and overachieving students. Raphael was a portraitist of great personalities and, along with his inspiration, he used excellent technique to convey the authority and dignity of his subjects, their incredible beauty, or the intelligence and sophistication of one Baldassare Castiglione, a consummate nobleman, writer, diplomat. Raphael decorated the Villa Farnesina, owned by the banker Agostino Chigi, with a magnificent Triumph of Galatea, the nymph riding on her shell pulled by two dolphins. Raphael never ceased to paint portraits, devotional scenes and large-scale altarpieces. Their increasingly intense expression and rich colouring are crowned by the delightful Transfiguration, almost completed at the moment of his death.