Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (March 28 or April 6, 1483 – April 6, 1520),known as Raphael
was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form,
ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.Together with
Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.
Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37,
leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed
Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. The best known work is
The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his
work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality.
He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome
his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking.