Italian High Renaissance Painter, 1483-1520 Italian painter and architect. As a member of Perugino's workshop, he established his mastery by 17 and began receiving important commissions. In 1504 he moved to Florence, where he executed many of his famous Madonnas; his unity of composition and suppression of inessentials is evident in The Madonna of the Goldfinch (c. 1506). Though influenced by Leonardo da Vinci's chiaroscuro and sfumato, his figure types were his own creation, with round, gentle faces that reveal human sentiments raised to a sublime serenity. In 1508 he was summoned to Rome to decorate a suite of papal chambers in the Vatican. The frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura are probably his greatest work; the most famous, The School of Athens (1510 C 11), is a complex and magnificently ordered allegory of secular knowledge showing Greek philosophers in an architectural setting. The Madonnas he painted in Rome show him turning away from his earlier work's serenity to emphasize movement and grandeur, partly under Michelangelo's High Renaissance influence. The Sistine Madonna (1513) shows the richness of colour and new boldness of compositional invention typical of his Roman period. He became the most important portraitist in Rome, designed 10 large tapestries to hang in the Sistine Chapel, designed a church and a chapel, assumed the direction of work on St. Peter's Basilica at the death of Donato Bramante,   Related Paintings of RAFFAELLO Sanzio :. | Virgin Mary and her son | Portrai ot Fidela | Kadalina | Christ on the cross | The Liberation of St Peter |
Related Artists:
J.P. Lemke

Giovanni Battista Spinelli
( fl from c. 1630; dc. 1660). Italian painter and draughtsman
Helene Schjerfbeck
Finnish Painter, 1862-1946 .Finnish painter. In 1873 she began to study at the Finnish Art Society drawing school in Helsinki. On the death of her father in 1876, she was forced to seek help to finance her studies. In 1877 she went to the private academy of Adolf von Becker (1831-1909) in Helsinki, and her work was first shown in public in 1879. In the autumn of 1880 she went to Paris to study at the Academie Trelat de Vigne under Leon Bonnat and Jean-Leon Gereme and in 1881 moved to the Academie Colarossi, studying under Gustave Courtois ( fl 1852-1908) and Raphael Collin (1850-1916). In Brittany that summer, she painted a large oil, A Boy Feeding his Little Sister