How Raphael Became a Master
Even the greatest star begins as a student. By humility and study, Raphael eclipsed all who came before...
It may be appear poetically humble to the 21st century man that the greatest painter in Western history — Raffaello Santi — hailed not from Rome, Florence, or any other of the revered capitals of Europe, but rather from a tranquil town on the forested flanks of the Apennine mountains.
But when Raphael was born, his hometown of Urbino was no mere curiosity for travelers to the Italian Marches. For under the rule of the valorous and wise Federico III da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino — a man revered as La Luce dell’Italia, the Light of Italy — the city had flourished from modesty into the seat of one of the most enlightened courts the Old World has ever known.
By the late 15th century, with her Scriptorium surpassing the output even of Florence — and scholars, poets, painters and musicians converging on the city from all across Italy — a love of learning pervaded the streets of Urbino, even as she retained an endearingly rustic humility. It is precisely this spirit that would propel Raphael through bitter loss to surpass his peers and earn the admiration of the world.
What follows is the story of how Raphael eclipsed his own master and defined the course of the Italian High Renaissance — by the age of just twenty one.
Grief in Urbino
The enlightened rule of Federico da Montefeltro would leave a lasting legacy upon the city of Urbino — in the beauty of her architecture, the prosperity of her people, and vibrancy of her court — far beyond his death in 1482. The Renaissance he helped to spark would spread far beyond the walls of Urbino and the shores of Italy, borne aloft by a boy who was born just a stone’s throw from the Ducal Palace.
It was three o'clock on the night of Good Friday, 1483, when the reign of Federico’s son Guidobaldo da Montefeltro was not yet six months old, that Maria di Battista Ciarla brought a baby boy into this world.
Her husband, Giovanni Santi, was a respected figure in the city, who had painted for her churches, and earned the favour of Duke Federico for his literary talents. He was the first Urbinate artist of note, but even he could not have known that the son his wife now bore would transcend not only him, but all others who had come before him, in both craft and in fame.
Following the death of his mother when he was just eight years old, the young Raphael sought solace, and focus, by aiding his father in the family workshop. Duke Guidobaldo meanwhile, like his own father before him, had married a woman of exceptional culture (Elisabetta Gonzaga), and the court they held was as radiant in the arts and noble pursuits of men as ever.
Through his father’s commissions for the local nobility and even the ducal family itself, the curious young Raphael was able to admire the greatest works in the Ducal Palace from up close. It was a peaceful and somewhat carefree time, as the father-son duo thrived in the nascent years of the High Renaissance.
But innocence would not last, and darkness engulfed the life of Raphael on the 1st of August 1494, when his father joined his mother in the afterlife. The distraught Raphael, an orphan at just eleven years old, buried his father in the monastery of San Francesco — forced to embrace the sobering reality that his talent was now his only lifeline.
An Apprentice to the Arts
The Madonna and Child, that bread and butter subject of Italian painters for centuries, has as many incarnations across the peninsula as there are grains of sand on a beach. Yet among that sea of ordinary, in Urbino there is one that is extraordinary.
It was in 1498, four years after the death of his father had left him an orphan, that the teenage Raphael painted this beautifully tender image of the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ upon the wall of the very room in which he had been born. That it was by the hand of a fifteen year old boy is remarkable enough. That Raphael achieved this by painting directly onto wet plaster — the so-called 'fresco' technique, which usually required years of training to master — truly allows us to appreciate the talent of this boy. Still today located in the house where he had grown up, the Madonna di Casa Santi, the first work attributed to Raphael in his own right, is a jewel not only of Urbino, but a cornerstone in the history of Western art.
It is little wonder therefore that before he was even a man, Raphael's precocious skill had attracted the eye of the most prominent painter in the peninsula, to whom we owe the beautiful register paintings of the Sistine Chapel — the Umbrian master Pietro Vannucci, who on account of his many works in Perugia, was nicknamed ‘Perugino’.
Yet if it was the talent of Raphael that gained entry to the workshop, it was “his beautiful manners and character” (Vasari, Life of Raphael) which gained him the friendship of both its master and his fellow apprentices. Thus under the both able and surrogate paternal guidance of Perugino, the young Raphael pursued the training that the death of his father had so cruelly interrupted.
Breaking Out
Made humble by nature, or else by tragic circumstance, Raphael embraced all that Perugino knew to teach. By the turn of the sixteenth century, only an exhaustive inspection could tell his copies and his master’s originals apart.
By the 10th December 1500, Raphael had evidently impressed Perugino and his client network enough to receive his first major commission, along with Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, to produce an altarpiece for the Baronci family chapel in the Church of Sant’Agostino, Città di Castello. It is mark of how rapidly his talent had expanded that only Raphael, aged just seventeen, is defined in the contract as a magister, or fully trained painter — despite Evangelista being over twenty years his senior.
Sadly, the work which resulted the following year would be shattered by the earthquake which shook central Italy in 1789, leaving us only fragments today.
Raphael would find work not merely with patrons, but fellow artists too. In 1502, Pinturicchio, another master of the Italian Renaissance who had enjoyed the favour of Popes Innocent VIII and Alexander VI, was entrusted with the decoration of the glittering Piccolomini Library in the Duomo of Siena.
It was quite the honour therefore for young Raphael when Pinturicchio, “knowing him to be an excellent draughtsman” (Vasari, Life of Raphael), invited him across the border to the Republic of Siena to work together on the great commission. There, while producing several cartoons for the design of the Library, Raphael would collaborate with Pinturicchio on several projects around the city, further immersing himself in the world beyond his master’s workshop.
Following his return to Umbria, he would indeed have the chance to truly demonstrate that he was a magister in more than mere name.
The Two Weddings
In 1504, Raphael received another commission in Città del Castello. This time, however, there would be no collaborator, only a friendly competitor — Perugino himself.
The commission in question, from Filippo di Lodovico Albizzini, concerned an altarpiece for the Chapel of San Giuseppe in the Church of San Francesco. The subject of the altarpiece was to be Lo Sposalizio della Vergine, or Wedding of the Virgin. Yet as Fate had it, Perugino had himself just completed a piece with precisely the same subject for the Duomo of Perugia.
No matter what the twenty one year old Raphael did, therefore, he would be compared to the genius of Perugino, a man over twice his age. What, then, was he to do?
Should he play it safe and pay homage to the man who had been as a second father, thus being once again indistinguishable from his master? Or should he break ranks, take a risk, and make his own name, becoming both fully a man and magister?
It is testament to the genius of Raphael that upon seeing Perugino’s Sposalizio, he resolved to do both, and fully embrace the spirit of the burgeoning Renaissance his home city had done much to cradle, while honouring his education.
To understand how, let us consider and analyze the two pieces side by side, the Sposalizio della Vergine of Perugino on the left, and that of Raphael on the right:
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