Raffaello Sanzio Da Urbino Essay Example

Vinci and Michelangelo. Here in Florence he gained important commissions such as Monde de Crucifixion.

Raphael was able to assimilate the influence of Florentine art, while keeping his own developing style. In Florence, Raphael studied Michelangelo’s use of anatomy and Leonardo da Vinci’s use of light and shadow. It was in Florence that Raphael made a name for himself as an artist. In Florence he started his series of Madonna’s. These paintings are what made Raphael famous in Florence. Madonna means Mary, the mother of Jesus, and she is portrayed as a loving, caring human woman in his paintings. At that time paintings of Mary were always portrayed as an angel with a halo, un-human like.

Some of the more famous paintings of the Madonna by Raphael included Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints, Esterhazy Madonna, La Belle Jardiniere, and the worldly famous Madonna of the Goldfinch. The author of “ABC_People” goes more into detail. He says: Raphael was particularly influenced by Leonardo's Madonna and Child with St. Anne pictures, which are marked by an intimacy and simplicity of setting uncommon in 15th-century art. Raphael learned the Florentine method of building up his composition in depth with pyramidal figure masses; the figures are grouped as a single unit, but each retains its own individuality and shape.

A new unity of composition and suppression of inessentials distinguishes the works he painted in Florence. Raphael also owed much to Leonardo's lighting techniques; he made moderate use of Leonardo's chiaroscuro (i. e. , strong contrast between light and dark), and he was especially influenced by his summate (i. e. , use of extremely fine, soft

shading instead of line to delineate forms and features). Raphael went beyond Leonardo, however, in creating new figure types whose round, gentle faces reveal uncomplicated and typically human sentiments but raised to a sublime perfection and serenity (ABC People).

Within Four years of living in Florence, Raphael had achieved great success and fame, which spread abroad. In 1508 he moved to Rome and was entrusted by Pope Julius II with the decoration of the Stanza, an enormous commission for the 26 year old artist. The first room Stanza Della Senatura was completed in 1511. There was a stanza for each of the four walls. Each side represented a topic. The four sides were about poetry represented by Parnassus, law represented by Jurisprudence, theology represented by Diputa, and philosophy represented by The School of Athens.

When Pope Julius II died in 1513, Pope Leo X who was a member of the Medici family became pope. He had Raphael hold important positions in the papal court, such as painter, architect and archeologist, as well as the first comprehensive survey of the antiquities of Rome. He admired loved, and supported the art of Raphael, so much for the fact that he would have Raphael do unusual tasks such as decorating Cardinal Bambinas bathroom with pictures of Venus. Also he had Raphael make a Vatican tapestry cartoon depicting happenings from the Act of Apostles.

The last painting by Raphael was The Transfiguration in 1520. It was commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de ’Medici. He was not able to complete this painting before the time of his death at the age 37According to Vasari, who recorded the lives

of many of the Renaissance masters; this is in fact how Raphael died. "Meanwhile, pursuing his amours in secret, Raffaello continued to divert himself beyond measure with the pleasures of love; whence it happened that, having on one occasion indulged in more than his usual excess, he returned to his house in a violent fever.

The physicians, therefore, believing that he had overheated himself, and receiving from him no confession of the excess of which he had been guilty, imprudently bled him, insomuch that he was weakened and felt himself sinking; for he was in need rather of restoratives. Thereupon he made his will: and first, like a good Christian, he sent his mistress out of the house, leaving her the means to live honorably. Next, he divided his possessions among his disciples, Giulio Romano, whom he had always loved dearly, and the Florentine Giovanni Francesco, c alled Il Fattore, with a priest of Urbino, his kinsman, whose name I do not know.

Then he gave orders that some of his wealth should be used for restoring with new masonry one of the ancient tabernacles in S. Maria Ritonda, and for making an altar, with a marble statue of Our Lady, in that church, which he chose as his place of repose and burial after death; and he left all the rest to Giulio and Giovanni Francesco, appointing as executor of his will Messer Baldassarre da Pescia, then Datary to the Pope.

Finally, he confessed and was penitent, and ended the course of his life at the age of thirty-seven, on the same day that he was born, which was Good Friday.

" (Vasari) Raphael died before he was able to finish the painting The Transfiguration. The Transfiguration is a complex work that combines extreme formal polish and elegance of execution with an atmosphere of tension and violence communicated by the agitated gestures of closely crowded groups of figures.

It shows a new sensibility that is like the prevision of a new world, turbulent and dynamic; in its feeling and composition it inaugurated the Mannerist movement and tends toward an expression that may even be called Baroque (ABC People). When his funeral mass was held at the Vatican, Raphael’s Transfiguration was placed on his coffin stand, in Rome, Italy. He left behind a considerable legacy and was celebrated even after his lifetime.