Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio or Santi)

Raphael, Raffaello Sanzio, was born in Urbino in 1483, the son of the court painter Giovanni Santi. After his father's early death he entered the workshop of Pietro Perugino, quickly learning to paint almost indistinguishably from his master. From 1504 to 1508 he studied the work of Leonardo and Michelangelo in Florence and painted many serene, graceful Madonnas. In 1508 Pope Julius II summoned him to Rome to decorate rooms in the Vatican Palace, now known as the Raphael Rooms; The School of Athens, with its majestic classical architecture and assembly of philosophers, became the model of High Renaissance harmony. He went on to design tapestries for the Sistine Chapel for Pope Leo X, direct the building of Saint Peter's and oversee the recording of Rome's antiquities, running an enormous workshop. Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints, painted around 1504 as an altarpiece for a convent in Perugia, shows both Perugino's influence and Raphael's own maturing style. Raphael died in Rome in 1520, at only thirty-seven. With Leonardo and Michelangelo he forms the great triad of the High Renaissance, and his elegant, balanced art was upheld for centuries as the supreme model of academic painting.