The work is considered a masterpiece in the use of perspective and in the portrayal of the artistic ideals of the High Renaissance.
Scala/Art Resource, NY
Raphael Drawing
Subtle shading, giving the illusion of voluptuous, rounded shape is characteristic of the work of Raphael. Like many other Renaissance drawings, this one, in red chalk, was probably a preparatory study for a future painting.
Scala/Art Resource, NY
Raphael (painter) (1483-1520) (properly, Raffaelo Sanzio), Italian painter who was one of the leading artists of the Italian Renaissance. He created many of the most significant paintings of the early 16th century and his art was extremely influential for centuries after his death.
Raphael was born in Urbino on March 28 or April 6, 1483. His father, the artist Giovanni di Santi, worked mainly for Francesco Gonzaga in Mantua, and Raphael spent his youth in a courtly environment. In 1500, so Vasari records, Raphael was apprenticed to Perugino, a highly respected artist who was one of the first in Italy to paint extensively in oil. He employed pure strong colours for his figures, which were imbued with a particularly sweet air of piety, often setting them in landscapes infused with pale, shimmering light.
Raphael's early paintings include large altarpieces as well as smaller works, both devotional and secular, man
y of them made for the court at Urbino. One such is a small panel painting, St George Slaying the Dragon (c. 1505, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.); it seems to be connected with Guidobaldo da Montefeltro's election to the Order of the Garter in 1504 and is remarkable for its miniature precision and the knowledge of the work of the Flemish painter Han Memling that it displays. Raphael's earliest large-scale paintings were executed in Cittą di Castello, which was a day's ride from Urbino.
