Raphael Timeline

The most striking influence on Raphael's work during these years was Leonardo da Vinci, who returned to Florence from 1500 to 1506. Leonardo's compositions and techniques profoundly shaped Raphael's development.

Image source: Leonardo da Vinci

Raphael led a 'nomadic' life working in various centres in Northern Italy but spent a good deal of time in Florence from about 1504. Though traditionally called a 'Florentine period' of about 1504–08, he was possibly never a continuous resident there.

In October 1504, the mother of the next Duke of Urbino wrote a letter of recommendation to the Gonfaloniere of Florence: 'The bearer of this will be found to be Raphael, painter of Urbino, who, being greatly gifted in his profession has determined to spend some time in Florence to study.'

Frescoes in Perugia of about 1505 show a new monumental quality in the figures, which may represent the influence of Fra Bartolomeo, who Vasari says was a friend of Raphael.

Image source: Fra Bartolomeo

In 1508, Raphael moved to Rome at the invitation of Pope Julius II, to work on the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican, where he would reside for the rest of his life.

Image source: Pope Julius II

In about 1510, Raphael was asked by Bramante to judge contemporary copies of Laocoön and His Sons, the celebrated ancient sculpture that had recently been rediscovered in Rome.

Image source: Laocoön and His Sons

Raphael made no prints himself, but entered into a collaboration with Marcantonio Raimondi to produce engravings of his designs, creating many of the most famous Italian prints of the century and playing an important role in the rise of the reproductive print.

Image source: Marcantonio Raimondi

Raphael completed the first section of his Vatican work in 1511. The reaction of other artists to the daunting force of Michelangelo became the dominating question in Italian art for the following few decades.

Image source: Raphael Rooms

The death of Julius II in 1513 did not interrupt the work at all, as he was succeeded by the Medici Pope Leo X, with whom Raphael formed an even closer relationship and who continued to commission him.

Image source: Pope Leo X

After Bramante's death in 1514, Raphael was named architect of the new St Peter's, adding major architectural responsibilities to his painting and workshop activities.

Image source: St. Peter's Basilica

Raphael never married, but in 1514 became engaged to Maria Bibbiena, Cardinal Bibbiena's niece. He seems to have been talked into it by his friend the cardinal, and his lack of enthusiasm is shown by the marriage never taking place before her death in 1520.

Raphael asked Marco Fabio Calvo to translate Vitruvius's Four Books of Architecture into Italian; this translation he received around the end of August 1514, supporting his growing architectural work.

Image source: Vitruvius

In 1515, Raphael was given powers as Prefect over all antiquities unearthed within, or a mile outside, the city of Rome, reflecting his authority on ancient monuments.

From 1517 until his death, Raphael lived in the Palazzo Caprini, at the corner between piazza Scossacavalli and via Alessandrina in the Borgo, in rather grand style in a palace designed by Bramante.

Image source: Palazzo Caprini

According to Marino Sanuto the Younger's diary, in 1519 Raphael offered to transport an obelisk from the Mausoleum of Augustus to St Peter's, demonstrating his engagement with Rome's ancient monuments.

Image source: Mausoleum of Augustus

Maria Bibbiena, Raphael's fiancée, died in 1520 before their marriage ever took place, confirming what many saw as Raphael's lack of enthusiasm for the engagement arranged by her uncle, Cardinal Bibbiena.

Raphael died on Good Friday, 6 April 1520, which was possibly his 37th birthday. He was still at the height of his powers at his death. Vasari says he had also been born on a Good Friday and attributed his death to exhaustion brought on by unceasing romantic interests while working on the Loggia.

It is possible that Raphael saw the finished series of his works before his death—they were probably completed in 1520. His workshop team added a fourth room to the Vatican apartments after his early death, probably only including some elements designed by Raphael.

After Raphael's death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo exceeded his until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models.

Image source: Michelangelo

After Raphael's death, most of the artists of his great workshop were later scattered, and some killed, by the violent Sack of Rome in 1527, ending one of the most influential artistic workshops in history.

Image source: Sack of Rome (1527)

Court life in Urbino became established as the model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through Baldassare Castiglione's depiction of it in his classic work The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528, immortalizing the world Raphael came from.

Image source: The Book of the Courtier

The opinion generally held in the middle of the sixteenth century was that Raphael was the ideal balanced painter, universal in his talent and satisfying all absolute standards, whereas Michelangelo was seen as an eccentric genius, brilliant but unbalanced.

Raphael's period of greatest influence was from the late 17th to late 19th centuries, when his perfect decorum and balance were greatly admired, making him the supreme model for academic art across Europe.

Reynolds was less enthusiastic about Raphael's panel paintings, but their slight sentimentality made them enormously popular in the 19th century. As Wölfflin wrote of Raphael's Madonnas: 'We have been familiar with them from childhood onwards, through a far greater mass of reproductions than any other artist in the world has ever had...'

In Germany, Raphael had an immense influence on the religious art of the Nazarene movement and the Düsseldorf school of painting in the 19th century, whose artists revered his serene harmonies as models of Christian art.

Image source: Nazarene movement

By 1900, Raphael's popularity was surpassed by Michelangelo and Leonardo, perhaps as a reaction against the etiolated Raphaelism of 19th-century academic artists such as Bouguereau, marking a shift in critical taste away from his idealized harmony.

Although art historian Bernard Berenson in 1952 termed Raphael the 'most famous and most loved' master of the High Renaissance, art historians Leopold and Helen Ettlinger noted that Raphael's lesser popularity in the 20th century was obvious from the contents of art library shelves.