Sanzio Raphael

1483-1520. Renaissance painter. He studied first under his father, and later under Perugia in his native town of Urbino. At Florence he became famous under the tutelage of Leonardo da Vinci* and Michelangelo.* From the former he learned the softness and the sweetness, from the latter the strength and the drama, and from them both the depth of composition and the pyramidal figured masses that characterized virtually all his later works. He continued his study in Rome under these masters, with whom he became linked as symbols of the Renaissance, and in Rome he died. In the main, Raphael's subjects were religious or philosophical and were intentionally symbolic, even allegorical. Thus in his School of Athens, Plato is pictured as a grave old man, pointing upward to the heavenly font of Forms; Aristotle, a vigorous and youthful figure, points downward, whence his truth came. Though Raphael is best known for his Madonnas, his subjects include the whole of the life of Christ. So great has been his influence that the image of Bible personages to our day is the image literally made colorful by the genial and ever-popular Raphael.