Essay on Raphael Sanzio Inspired

Raphael Sanzio was one of the most important artists of the Italian Renaissance. Raphael painted and designed many brilliant pieces of work and the stanzas inside the Vatican. He was a master at such necessities of modern art such as depth and perspective and the use of light and shadow, and was the turning point styles of paintings like the use of Madonnas in paintings. Through his short life, Raphael would make some of the most awe-inspiring, beautiful, and influential works of art during the Italian Renaissance.

From the book Living with Art I chose Raphael. The School of Athens on page 160. This painting took place in Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican. Rome. This is a naturalistic stylized pace of art. The two visual elements of design that I saw in the Raphael painting, is color, and space. There are both horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines to making up the arches and all the columns. An implied line is in each group of men and women in this paining. The group of young women and men in the bottom right hand corner are looking up at the ceiling as like the man are trying to describe the structure of it. The arch emphasis allusion to make the person

Another major idea during the Renaissance was discovering new techniques that allowed artists to portray more accurate and realistic works instead of fanciful and abstract supernaturals. Perspective was the biggest discovery of the time period, but many aspects went into such work. Proportion and foreshortening were two crucial skills needed to achieve perspective. Proportion is the correspondence of a singular part to the entire whole, and foreshortening is the shortening of lines used to create depth. Sfumato, the blending of varying tones, was also utilized in artwork to create depth. In the famous painting “Mona Lisa”, artist Leonardo Da Vinci used sfumato to project a three dimensional illusion to the viewer. Other techniques such as chiaroscuro, the contrasting of light and dark, were

Leonardo, the distracted, uncommitted artist, easily lost interest in his work, leaving the majority of his pieces unfinished. Michelangelo was also an avid give-up-er, though not to the unprofessional extent of Leonardo, which is one of the reasons Michelangelo tended to get more attention from people who paid for art, as Michelangelo was more reliable. In contrast, Raphael created and finished much more art than the others. The reasons for the differences in these artists’ amount of unfinished art can be revealed in how much assistance they used. First, Leonardo did his work almost completely on his own, limiting his assistants to mostly mixing the paints. Michelangelo shared this controlling personality, letting only his best helpers paint small and insignificant parts of the sistine chapel. Lastly, Raphael was more open to assistance, letting his aids do much of the painting of his large pieces, giving him more time in the creativity and drawing out of his

Another technique that was developed was perspective. Perspective was formed with the creation of the vanishing point to make paintings more realistic. Masaccio was one of the great painters of his time because of his skill of recreating lifelike figures and movement, along with portraying a sense of three-dimensionality. One of Masaccio’s greatest paintings is the Holy Trinity which was painted in 1427. This painting has a great use of perspective and chiaroscuro to show realism. Chiaroscuro was another technique that was formed to show light and dark intensities to give the impression of depth and texture as well as a source of light. With the use of different shades of colour, sfumato was a new technique that emerged during this time that produces soft, imperceptible transitions between colours and tones to show blending and oneness. These techniques established a basis of modern art. These techniques are still used till this day and have shaped the way art is currently produced.

Raphael was one of the most important artists of the Italian Renaissance. Raphael painted and designed many brilliant pieces of work and the stanzas inside the Vatican. He was a master at such necessities of modern art such as depth and perspective and the use of light and shadow, and was the turning point styles of paintings like the use of Madonnas in paintings. Through his short life, Raphael would make some of the most awe-inspiring, beautiful, and influential works of art during the Italian Renaissance.

When he was in his teens he was "commissioned to paint for the Church of San Nicola in the neighboring town of Castello" so his work even impressed the church, which was a big deal back then. Raphael was invited by a master painter, whose name was Pietro Vannuci otherwise known as Perugino, to be his apprentice in Perguia, "in the Umbria region of central Italy". In Perguia, "Pergino was working on frescoes at the Collegio del Cambia" where Raphael would go and learn how to paint frescoes. He was his apprentice for 4 years. In those 4 years he took advantage of the opportunity and gained a lot of knowledge and hands on experience

Raffaello Sanzio, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect born in the mountain town of Urbino. In his early years, Raphael was trained by his father Giovanni Santi, a court painter and versifier, allowing him to gain a wide education in the arts, literature, and social skills. This enabled Raphael to move easily amongst the higher circles of court society and this helped him gain recognition. “His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (from 1504-1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates.” (Raphael Biography)

Raphael followed Perugino’s method of painting all of his life. Having been commissioned the Umbrian cities and courts provided a source of wealthy and potential clients for Raphael. Raphael produced high quality work at a very young age. Urbino, where Raphael was born was considered a place where many artists flourished. Raphael worked with Perugino for about four years. Raphael began learning more by studying the works of great masters such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. He took along with him a lot of their techniques and style but also kept his own unique style while doing so. Many people liked and enjoyed Raphael’s company and considered him a friendly and social artist. Raphael received an important commission which was to paint the Coronation of the Virgin for the Oddi Chapel in the church of San Francesco, Perugia. This painting is now held in the Vatican Museum in Rome. In Raphael’s painting “The Marriage of the Virgin” you can see the relationships between the figures and the architecture. You can also see that the disposition of each figure in relation to the others is more informal and animated. The three small paintings that Raphael did after this one were “Vision of a Knight”, “Three Graces”, and “St Michael”. These paintings were examples of narrative paintings, showing youthful freshness and a maturing ability to control the elements of his own style. After a while Raphael’s desire for more knowledge on painting led him to look for more models to work from aside from Perugino. Raphael’s uncle Bartolomeo was subsequently engaged in litigation with his stepmother who his father remarried after Raphael’s mother died. Many say that after both his parents died he kept on living with his uncle and his stepmother. He lived with her when he wasn’t working as an apprentice with a master of the arts. Many of Raphael’s father’s friends say that Raphael was of great help to his father and he showed

-I feel others should know the hard work and time Raphael put into learning art and perfecting his

Both men lived lives full of art, intrigue, and philosophy, devoting themselves to the betterment of mankind. Doctors, engineers, poets, architects, and artists alike have all drawn inspiration from these Renaissance men. While many today will simply call them artists, I believe they were much more than that. Men of conviction, honor, and dignity that always challenged the best from themselves. As men, though, they suffered from weaknesses that many others have fallen to. Leonardo had a poor attention span, and often would put off a project to work on other things. Michelangelo was known to have a short temper, and would become extremely aggressive any time he was tested. Sometimes we like to look past the weakness of those we look up to, as a way of making them out to be a god. To do this only taints the legacy of men like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. As strong minded people, they both understood their own humanity and weaknesses, and used these weaknesses to propel themselves forward. Leonardo though unable to stick to a project, always wrote down any ideas he had, knowing that they could be used for more than just blank space. Michelangelo concentrated his aggression to always finish his projects, and do so to the best of his ability without flaw. They never let their weaknesses stand in their way to greatness. Nowadays, we can take more inspiration from them than just their art and inventions. We can continue to live like they did, never letting a weakness stop us from reaching our goals, but using that weakness. Using something meant to cause us to stumble, and creating something else out of it. Creating something absolutely beautiful, and new to this

Every painting is a unique experience for each individual person, therefore two of the artists that offered some of the most unique experiences where Leonardo da vinci and Michelangelo. While both of these painters are today well regarded and remembered, during their time they both had achieved such status in vastly different ways. Therefore even though these two artists lived during the same time these two are nothing alike. With their unique take on the world and events around them they were able to shape how the average person thought about the world around them.

The earliest signs of a painting was with angels one executed on a large landscape, and the last being the figure of Christ, getting the texture of the flesh how he wanted it to be. Leonardo knew how manipulate the way certain colors would mix, how the backgrounds would come off, and how to get the lights the way he wanted them and to achieve his goal. He also k new how to change a rough, hard metallic to a light, soft yielding ones, also getting the cutting edges into far more interesting modulation of light and shade. His name for this trick was what he called it “soft union”. Every skill he had he would use with such great intensity, his works being filled with his scientific and philosophical background. Like every person there is always some little thing that you just cant seem to understand: his was how he would be working on a project to just stop working to take on a other project that everyone thought was to complex, he did it to just stop midway and the cycle repeats. His passion for horses was so strong, some thought he may have been a little crazy, what they didn’t know was that he was in fact studying

Painting had many idolized from the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations with works of vibrant, bright colors projected onto various canvases demonstrating natural beauty, architecture, and depictions of great cultural icons, such as the many figures of Greek mythology. New artists, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and many others had viewed classical pieces and set out to honor their ancient counterparts and to create their own style. Ideologically, artists became more centralized on the topic of the church, which is seen in many works, regardless of the patronage received from the actual papacy. New and past canvases and tools were introduced and reintroduced such as oil paintings, a prime example of Renaissance painting, fresco, involving pigments being mixed with water and applied to plaster, murals becoming more popular, etc. Techniques were also engineered to design and create the likes of astounding art which had never been seen before, such as perspective painting to create more detailed and dimensioned works as in Raphael’s “School of Athens.” Sfumato was another renowned technique made famous by Da Vinci which involved moving away from set, geometric borders and instead involved the use of mixing tones to create hazy outlines, exhibited in probably

Leonardo’s most famous painting by far is the Mona Lisa. It is a simple portrait of a young woman whose identity is unknown. She is sitting in front of a mountainous nature scene dressed in the clothing of the time. The most captivating aspect of the mysterious young woman is her very subtle smile. Not only is this a beautiful painting superficially, but also it is filled with many puzzles that art historians have been studying for years. One of the most interesting is the mismatch in the horizon of the background. The left side is significantly lower than the right. So if the observer focuses on the left side of the painting, she appears to be much taller and more erect than if he focuses on the right (WebMuseum). Da Vinci was a master of using perspective to trick the eyes of the observer.