Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino was born in 1483 in the court city of Urbino, the son of the court painter Giovanni Santi. He trained briefly under Perugino, absorbed lessons from Leonardo and Michelangelo, and at twenty-five was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II to fresco the papal apartments. The Stanza della Segnatura (1509–11), where the School of Athens depicts every major philosopher of antiquity gathered under a vault, is the High 's most perfect set piece. Across his short career he produced dozens of Madonnas of unsurpassed tenderness, ran a workshop of fifty assistants, served as chief architect of St Peter's after Bramante's death, and oversaw the protection of ancient Roman antiquities. He died on his thirty-seventh birthday, April 6, 1520, after a brief fever. Rome went into public mourning; he was buried in the , where his tomb still stands.
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Painter · Architect · Master of the High Renaissance
Raphael
1,483 CE – 1,520 CE
The Urbino-born painter whose serene Madonnas and the School of Athens fresco defined the High Renaissance — and whose death at thirty-seven shocked Rome into mourning.
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