Painter and Italian architect.

In Italian Raffaello Santi, or Raffaello Sanzio. No other figure incarnates best the classicism of the high Rebirth that of Raphaël, which, beside Leonardo da Vinci and of Michel-Angel, occupies an exceptional position, to the junction of multiple schools and tendencies; even if its genius could suffer from the morbidezza of the first and the terribilità of the second, its genius indeed tends to avoid the disproportion of its rivals.

Beyond of a very conclusive passion which goes back to living of the artist, it is not easy to question the production of Raphaël - which reached us without major lack -, work that the contemporary sensitivity could describe as cold, even of academic, and which are essential in fact by its immediacy.  

Florence
The installation of Raphaël with Florence will determine the assertion of its Article Arrivé in the Tuscan city at the end of the year 1504, it will remain there until 1508. The orders strictly florentines do not prevent it however from also working in Perugia. But, in Florence, it acquires its traditional control, which is expressed with the more high level in a dozen Madonna, of the Virgin in the meadow (1506) with the Virgin with the goldfinch (1507) and the Beautiful Flower stand (1507). In this last table, the Virgin is represented sat, holding the Jesus Child tenderly, contemplated upright affectionately by another child, holy Jean-Baptiste. Linked by the gesture and the glance, the three characters let themselves go to an innocent abandonment, which the serenity of the landscape answers.  

Rome
It is in fact in Rome that the genius of Raphaël will open out in all its plenitude. At the request of Jules II, Raphaël goes in the Eternal City as of the end of 1508. He answers with the greatest effectiveness the effervescence caused by the pontifical patronage around the rebuilding of the Saint-Pierre basilica, initially under the reign of Jules II (1503-1513), then under that of Leon X (1513-1521). He founds one of the workshops among most fertile of all the art history, rich person at the same time by the number of pupils and quality.

Major cycle of frescos for the Rooms of the palate of the Vatican requires the essence of its activity: room of the Signature (1508-1511), room of Héliodore (1511-1514), room of the Fire of the borough (1514-1517), paperboards of tapestries for the Sixtine vault (according to the Acts of the Apostles), the Cabins of the Vatican (1517-1519), decoration of the room of Constantin (1520-1524), completed after the death of the Master by the pupils of the workshop, of which Jules Romain (Giulio Romano). Raphaël also answers the many orders of other patrons, in particular with that of the Sienan banker Agostino Chigi. It is at the request of this one that it paints the Triumph of Galatée, for Chigi the villa, known as Farnésine, Roman residence of the banker. For the same patron, it works with the realization of two vaults, the first with Santa Maria della Pace and the other, the funerary vault of Chigi, in Santa Maria del Popolo.

Agostino Chigi causes moreover the decoration of the loggia of Psyche, in Farnésine. The architectural activities of Raphaël are far from being negligible and testify to the diversity of its genius. It is besides as an architect that it takes the succession of his friend Belling, in 1514, with the rebuilding of the Saint-Pierre basilica. Its contribution to the plans of the Madama villa locates it among the innovators most endowed with his generation, and not like a simple continuator of Belling. Lastly, in 1515, it is in charge of the conservation of the ancient monuments with Rome, work which it very takes with serious and which will be the subject of a report written by the author of the Courtier, his/her friend the diplomat Baldassare Castiglione, of which it makes at the same time the portrait.  

Other particular orders request it more and more. The great style tested in the frescos finds an undeniable echo in the tables, where the participation of the workshop was over-estimated a long time, almost only of the religious compositions and the portraits: of the Madonna Sixtine (1513-1514) in Portement de Croix (1517), of the Virgin of the pile cluster (1511) to the Virgin with the chair (1514), portrait of young woman says gave It velata (1516) to Leon X and to Two Cardinals (1518-1519), and the one of its most famous portraits, that of its mistress, Margherita Luti, or Fornarina (1519). Death surprises it in full activity, the Good Friday of the year 1520. One exposes above his bed of dead the Transfiguration, started in 1517, and which it practically has just completed.  

The constitution of a traditional language

Two facts are essential from the start: Raphaël is of an extreme permeability to the multiple influences which it receives, while carrying out each time masterly syntheses. Suave Pérugin in Florentins classicisants joined together around Fra Bartolomeo, it forges little by little a style which will be the prototype of the classicism. The Madonna of the period florentine testify to this supreme balance, this harmonious tension - single in Western painting, except perhaps in Poussin - between reality and the ideal. The form, born from empirical perception, is transfigured by the requirements of a higher vision which removes the sensory contribution from its slags and seems to register it in a universe which transcends time: the naturalness tends towards the divine one, and this last is incarnated in a significant form. From where a balance between offset and dynamism, drawing and color, sobriety and narrative effectiveness, grace and power.

Major cycle with the fresco then seems genuine proclamation of the raphaélesque classicism, of the unsurpassable models for what will be the traditional tradition, and this so much by the esthetic project than by the rich person contained philosophical and theological, with the service of a Church which wants to be triumphing. The School of Athens (1508-1511) and the Parnassus (1510-1511), in particular, are the materialization of the humanistic universalism of the Rebirth, in agreement with the wish to link in the same movement the pagan heritage and the Judaeo-Chistian revelation, a dream which will well quickly be swept with the Reform and the Counter-Reformation.  

Lastly, so much by its works than by its active teaching, Raphaël is the father of the academic long tradition, with the direction nobly Platonic of the term, a tradition which combines the lesson of Old - the antique - and that of reality; the drawing plays a fundamental role there, mainly with regard to the precise study of the anatomy.  

At Raphaël, the conquest of the style requires on the one hand an increasingly complex construction - exit of an attentive glance on Léonard and Michel-Angel -, on the other hand the use of an increasingly rich and intense chromatic range - sign of a sensitivity particular to Venetian painting, perhaps through the example of Sebastiano del Piombo, Venetian artist which works in Rome, where it continues like a rival of the painter of Urbino.

Towards a going beyond the classicism

Permeability and invention are thus two characteristics which, at Raphaël, far from being paradoxical, generate a rich course, unfortunately too early stopped. Its ultimate work, Transfiguration, is in that highly emblematic. It was thought a long time that only the upper part of the table - supremely “traditional” and balanced - was due to the Master, whereas the lower part, with her vehement scene of exorcism, would be due to the pupils, probably with Jules Romain. Indeed, emotional rhetoric and the complexity of the composition seem extremely far away from the traditional spirit of the Master.

However of the recent studies, relating at the same time on the stylistic analysis and the scientific examination of painting itself, proved its quasi total paternity. Transfiguration is thus an essential stake towards innovations which death prevented its author from implementing. The extraordinary lower part of work anticipates practically a century of Italian painting and offers in the same dash the powerful “idealized” reality of Annibale Carrache and Bolonais and the tragic naturalism of Caravage, whose Raphaël precedes also the clearly-obscure violent one. In fact, beyond the mannerism, the artist seems to announce the two fundamental currents which, around 1600, will regenerate Italian ground painting.

The posterity of Raphaël

In the workshop of Raphaël shone of remarkable personalities, which are not only epigones of the Master: Jules Romain, Perin del Vaga, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Gianfrancesco Penni. The death of Raphaël and, more still, the bag of Rome in 1527 disorganize this active place: Jules Romain leaves Rome in 1524, Polidoro in 1527, and Perin the following year. All will take part in their way with the adventure of the mannerism, managing the rich person and complex heritage which the Master their left in division, heritage that engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi - he also resulting from the workshop of Raphaël - diffuse at the level of Europe.  

The shade of Raphaël extends extremely far in Western painting, so much through the strict traditional, even academic tradition - of Chick with David and Ingres, of the Brown one with the Nazarenes - and with the interpretation that gives of it the humanistic culture and the literature, of Arioste with Balzac, that through less subjugated figures with this tradition - such Delacroix and Renoir. This last writing in its Correspondence (1881-1882): “I had gone to see this table for me to pass the desire from it: and here that I am in front of the freest painting, most solid, most marvelously simple and sharp that one can imagine.”