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: 63795 Poetry 1509-11 Fresco, diameter 180 cm Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican The lyre and the laurel wreath are the symbols of Poetry, who here appears as a winged figure. Like Aristotle in The School of Athens, she is holding a book in an unusual way; the title is not known. Two putti are holding the tablets on which are written the words of the Roman poet Virgil's, "Numine Afflatur" (Inspired by the Spirit). The Christian "spirit" is meant here, since putti are holding the text and not genii, as with the figure of Philosophy.Artist:RAFFAELLO Sanzio Title: Poetry (ceiling tondo) Painted in 1501-1550 , Italian - - painting : religious
