Raphael, the Youngest Giant of the Renaissance: The School of Athens and a Career Cut Short at 37

Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, 1483–1520) was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance who, together with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period; he is famous for the clarity, harmony and grace of his work, above all the fresco The School of Athens in the Vatican, and for producing an enormous body of work before his early death at 37. For centuries after his death he was held up as the very model of perfect painting.

A painter's son from Urbino

Raphael was born in 1483 in Urbino, a small but highly cultured city in central Italy whose ducal court was famous for literature and the arts. His father, Giovanni Santi, was court painter to the ruler of Urbino. Raphael lost his mother when he was eight and his father when he was eleven, and he seems to have helped manage the family workshop from a very young age. According to the biographer Vasari, he was then placed as an apprentice with the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino, whose gentle, balanced style shaped his early work.

Learning from Leonardo and Michelangelo in Florence

Around 1504 Raphael moved to Florence, where Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were both at work. Rather than competing head-on, he absorbed what he saw: Leonardo's soft modelling and pyramid-shaped compositions, Michelangelo's powerful bodies. In these Florentine years he painted many gentle Madonnas, images of Mary and the infant Jesus that became hugely popular. His career falls into three phases, first described by Vasari: early years in Umbria, about four years in Florence, and his final, triumphant period in Rome.

The School of Athens

In 1508 Raphael was called to Rome by Pope Julius II to decorate a series of rooms in the Vatican palace, now known as the Raphael Rooms. In one of them he painted The School of Athens (1509–1511), a vast imaginary gathering of the great thinkers of ancient Greece. At the centre stand Plato, pointing upward to the world of ideas, and Aristotle, gesturing towards the earth. Around them philosophers, mathematicians and scientists argue, teach and write beneath grand classical arches. Raphael is thought to have given some figures the faces of his contemporaries, with Plato often said to resemble Leonardo. The painting is admired for its perfect perspective and the sense of calm order it brings to a crowd of dozens.

Busy master of a huge workshop

Raphael was enormously productive. He ran an unusually large workshop of assistants, which allowed him to take on frescoes, altarpieces, portraits, tapestry designs and architectural projects all at once. Under Pope Leo X he was made chief architect of the new St Peter's Basilica and was put in charge of recording the ruins of ancient Rome. He was also famously charming and well liked, unlike the often difficult Michelangelo, his great rival.

An early death

Raphael died in Rome in 1520 at the age of just 37. He was buried, at his own request, in the Pantheon, one of the best-preserved buildings of ancient Rome. After his death the influence of Michelangelo overshadowed his for a time, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Raphael's serene and harmonious qualities were again treated as the highest model for artists, and art academies across Europe based their teaching on his work.

Learn with Raphael: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
a Renaissance man	someone skilled in many fields	She's a real Renaissance man of the office.
in perspective	with realistic depth; or in proportion	Keep your problems in perspective.
a fresco	a painting on wet plaster	The School of Athens is a fresco.
a masterpiece	an artist's greatest work	It is Raphael's masterpiece.
cut short	ended too early	His career was cut short at 37.

Try this: Describe The School of Athens in three English sentences, using "in perspective" and "a masterpiece".