en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino[2]
(April 6 or March 28, 1483 - April 6, 1520[3]),
better known simply as Raphael, was an
Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. 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. Together with
Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional
trinity of great masters of that period.
Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually
large workshop, and despite his death at 37, a large body of
his work remains. Many of his works are found in the
Apostolic Palace of The Vatican, where the frescoed Raphael
Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career.
The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican
Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much
of his work was self-designed, but for the most part
executed by the workshop from his drawings, with
considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential
in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly
known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death,
the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more
widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's
more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as
the highest models. His career falls naturally into three
phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari:
his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years
(from 1504-1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of
Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve
years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close
associates.