Raphael (1483-1520)

Master painter and architect of the Italian High Renaissance. Raphael is best known for his Madonnas and for his large figure compositions in the Vatican in Rome. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.
Raphael is one of the most acute of all portraitists, effortlessly cleaving through the external defenses of his sitter, yet courteously colluding with whatever image the ego would seek to have portrayed. This duality, looking beneath the surface and yet remaining wholly respectful of the surface, gives an additional layer of meaning to all his portraits.

Portrait of Bindo Altoviti

Oil on canvas, 1512-1515
23.6" x 17.3" (60 x 44 cm)
National Gallery of Art, Washington

La Fornarina
(Portrait of a Young Woman)

Oil on wood, 1518-1519
33.5" x 23.6" (85 × 60 cm)
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

The Transfiguration

Oil on wood, 1518-1520
159.5" x 109.5" (405 × 278 cm)
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican

The Three Graces

Oil on panel, 1504-1505
6.7" x 6.7" (17 x 17 cm)
Musée Condé, Chantilly

The Small Cowper Madonna

Oil on wood, c. 1505
23.4" x 17.3" (59.5 x 44 cm)
National Gallery of Art, Washington