RAFFAELLO Sanzio
Italian High Renaissance Painter, 1483-1520
Italian painter and architect. As a member of Perugino's workshop, he established his mastery by 17 and began receiving important commissions. In 1504 he moved to Florence, where he executed many of his famous Madonnas; his unity of composition and suppression of inessentials is evident in The Madonna of the Goldfinch (c. 1506). Though influenced by Leonardo da Vinci's chiaroscuro and sfumato, his figure types were his own creation, with round, gentle faces that reveal human sentiments raised to a sublime serenity. In 1508 he was summoned to Rome to decorate a suite of papal chambers in the Vatican. The frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura are probably his greatest work; the most famous, The School of Athens (1510 C 11), is a complex and magnificently ordered allegory of secular knowledge showing Greek philosophers in an architectural setting. The Madonnas he painted in Rome show him turning away from his earlier work's serenity to emphasize movement and grandeur, partly under Michelangelo's High Renaissance influence. The Sistine Madonna (1513) shows the richness of colour and new boldness of compositional invention typical of his Roman period. He became the most important portraitist in Rome, designed 10 large tapestries to hang in the Sistine Chapel, designed a church and a chapel, assumed the direction of work on St. Peter's Basilica at the death of Donato Bramante,
ID: 63789 Madonna della Seggiola 1514 Oil on wood, diameter 71 cm Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence Raphael painted the picture in Rome, probably during the period immediately after the completion of the Stanza di Eliodoro. It soon passed into the Medicean collections. It was already there by 1589 and has been in the Pitti since the 18th century. It was carried off to Paris by the Napoleonic troops in 1799 and brought back to Florence in 1815. A celebrated picture in which Raphael is under the influence of the antique and of the Venetian school, of Titian and of Sebastiano del Piombo. The form of a "tondo" is in itself a reminder of Florence and carries us back to the taste of the Quattrocento. Of the form of the tondo the artist preserves and emphasizes the curve with his genial adaptation of the figures to the outline of the painting. And yet the composition is in no way forced, but on the other hand the figures in following the curve become more closely entwined together. This grouping, this closing around the fulcrum of the tondo coincides with the centre of affection - the little Christ, the spiritual centre of the picture. The colour, in spite of its vividness, has a fusion and a warmth which Raphael attains with genial and personal mastery.Artist:RAFFAELLO Sanzio Title: Madonna della Seggiola (Sedia) Painted in 1501-1550 , Italian - - painting : religious
