Raphael
(b Urbino, 28 March or 6 April 1483; d
Rome, 6 April 1520).
Italian painter, draughtsman and
architect. He has always been acknowledged as one of the
greatest European artists. With Leonardo da Vinci,
Michelangelo and Titian, he was one of the most famous
painters working in Italy in the period from 1500 to 1520,
often identified as the High Renaissance, and in this period
he was perhaps the most important figure. His early
altarpieces (of 1500–07) were made for Citta di Castello and
Perugia; in Florence between 1504 and 1508 he created some
of his finest portraits and a series of devotional paintings
of the Holy Family. In 1508 he moved to Rome, where he
decorated in fresco the Stanze of the papal
apartments in the Vatican Palace—perhaps his most celebrated
works—as well as executing smaller paintings in oil
(including portraits) and a series of major altarpieces,
some of which were sent from Rome to other centres. In Rome,
Raphael came to run a large workshop. He also diversified,
working as an architect and designer of prints.