Paintings

Twenty-five major paintings by Raffaello Sanzio — from the luminous early Madonnas painted in Umbria and Florence to the monumental Vatican frescoes and the unfinished Transfiguration that stood at the head of his funeral bier. Raphael was the supreme synthesizer of the High Renaissance: he absorbed the sfumato of Leonardo, the terribilità of Michelangelo, and the color of the Venetians, and fused them into a style of such effortless grace that it became the standard against which European painting was measured for four centuries. The School of Athens — with its perfect architecture, its portrait gallery of ancient philosophers, and its two central figures of Plato and Aristotle — is the most complete visual statement of Renaissance humanism. The Sistine Madonna gave the world its most famous pair of cherubs. Raphael died on Good Friday 1520, aged thirty-seven, and was buried in the Pantheon.