Raphael, Madonna and Child with a Book, 1503.
Written by Liisi Rohumae
Picasso once said, ‘Leonardo da Vinci promises us heaven, Raphael gives it to us.’
A master of the High Renaissance, Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known in English as Raphael, was born in 1483 in Urbino, a small city nestled in the hills. Urbino experienced a magnificent cultural flourishing in the 15th century, attracting artists and scholars from across Italy and beyond.
Raphael grew up amidst this vibrant intellectual and artistic environment, creating art from an early age and receiving his initial lessons from his father, Giovanni Santi, a renowned painter with a thriving workshop. Italian poet, professor, and humanist Carlo Bo remarked that in Urbino, Raphael “learned the divine proportion of genius, the value of philosophy, and the dignity which he imparted to his works as a painter.”
Raphael’s work is immediately striking for its empathy and humanism. He appealed to the better angels in us, his work exuding harmony and tranquility, placing us in a state of peaceful reflection. His art moves through its elegance and beauty, admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition. Crowned the "Prince of Painters" by Giorgio Vasari, a sixteenth-century biographer of artists, Raphael’s creative output is staggering, especially considering his brief 20-year career. A contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, though less widely known, he stands equal to them in every way.
After studying with his father and working in the busy workshop in Urbino, Raphael moved to Florence, drawn there by Leonardo da Vinci’s presence. Between 1504 and 1508, he painted at least seventeen small devotional panels of the Virgin and Child.
Raphael was most notably a master of perspective, skillfully creating the illusion of depth and space in his paintings. His use of linear perspective is evident in works like "The School of Athens," where architectural elements draw the viewer's eye into the scene. By employing vanishing points and foreshortening, Raphael achieved a three-dimensional effect, making his compositions more lifelike and immersive. This mastery not only enhanced the realism of his works but also their emotional and visual impact.
Madonna and Child
The Madonna and Child with Book is an oil on wood painting housed in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. In this painting a lucid geometry organizes the composition, from the pyramidal grouping of the Madonna and Child to the geometric idealization of their faces and bodies. Raphael employs a subtle linear perspective, using the book as a focal point. The arrangement of the figures and the soft background create a sense of depth, guiding the viewer’s eye naturally within the intimate space, enhancing the painting's realism and emotional connection.
As you look at the tender and serene way Raphael paints these two figures, you can’t help but think of his own mother Màgia who died when he was eight. Additionally, his lifelong practice of studying from live models is evident. Raphael had a high level of engagement with people − there’s an intimacy, a compassion, he is keenly interested in other humans.
Raphael, Madonna and Child with a Book, 1503.
The School of Athens
In 1508, Raphael was invited to Rome by Pope Julius II, and he resided there for the rest of his life. At only 25 years old, he started work on his best-known piece, The School of Athens.
Painted between 1509 and 1511, it was to decorate the rooms now called the Stanze di Raffaello in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. The fresco depicts a gathering across time of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists − Plato and Aristotle featured in the center. Michaelangelo was concurrently in Rome painting the Sistine Chapel. The two most likely influenced each other’s work as their projects progressed.
In The School of Athens, Raphael masterfully integrates Renaissance innovations and his extensive learning. He employs realistic human anatomy inspired by Michelangelo, vanishing points and emotional depth from Leonardo, and foreshortening and linear perspective techniques. Influenced by Bramante's architectural sensitivity, Raphael creates a compelling illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface, exemplifying his artistic prowess.
One of Raphael’s greatest contributions was using perspective and architectural setting in creating fully realized environments. He was a great designer, very attentive to geometry. No detail too small, everything carefully thought through and composed, the scenes and figures appear lifelike. Raphael created space in his paintings that would enhance the storytelling – few artists have mastered the illusion of depth on a flat surface the way he did.
Raphael, The School of Athens, 1509-11.
His brush strokes were about circular and curvy movement and his work can be seen as a synthesis of Michaelangelo and Da Vinci. He learned from both and built upon it, creating something wholly new.
He even painted them both into The School of Athens − Michaelangelo, the troubled one, as Heraclitus, and Leonardo as Plato. Raphael also included himself in the right-hand corner beside Ptolemy, looking directly at the viewer. This is groundbreaking as at the time artists were mostly seen as craftsmen and not depicted on the same level as philosophers and scientists.
Raphael excelled in countless different media forms. The fact that he was able to complete so many different works of art in his short lifetime speaks to his excellence and to his immense work ethic. His clients included the Pope, the cardinals, and the church in general. He quickly gained the patronage of the Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi, the richest man in Rome. Chigi commissioned designs for chapels in two Roman churches: Santa Maria della Pace and Santa Maria del Popolo. The Chigi Chapel is the only religious building of Raphael that has been preserved in its near original form.
Chigi Chapel
Raphael's use of perspective in the Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria della Pace in Rome exemplifies his mastery of this Renaissance technique, which he employed to create a harmonious and spiritually engaging space. The chapel's design incorporates architectural elements that enhance the viewer's sense of depth and space, achieving a seamless integration of painting and architecture that is characteristic of Raphael’s work.
In the Chigi Chapel, Raphael designed the architectural layout and the frescoes to complement each other, using perspective to extend the chapel's physical space into a visual illusion of greater depth. The dome of the chapel, adorned with a fresco of the Creation of the World, features a sophisticated use of perspective that makes the dome appear higher and more spacious than it actually is. This illusion is further reinforced by the use of trompe-l'oeil, a technique that creates an optical illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface.
The frescoes on the walls, depicting scenes from the Old Testament, are strategically placed to interact with the architecture’s lines and curves, guiding the viewer's eye upward towards the dome and enhancing the overall sense of a unified, celestial space. This strategic use of perspective not only magnifies the aesthetic and spiritual experience but also demonstrates Raphael’s innovative approach to integrating art and architectural space.
As the art historian Vasari put it, ‘It may be surely said that those who are the possessors of such rare and numerous gifts as were seen in Raffaello da Urbino, are not merely men, but, if it be not a sin to say it, mortal gods.’ -