Raphael – “Study for the Three Graces” (1518)
Media: Red chalk over stylus
Image source: Wiki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHUVyg85r-A

Raphael Sanzio (1483 – 1520) was a productive master painter and architect of the Italian High Renaissance.

Raphael was one of the finest draftsmen in the history of Western art, and used drawings extensively to plan his compositions. When beginning to plan a composition, he would lay out a large number of drawings on the floor, used different drawings to refine his poses and compositions, and begin to draw “rapidly”. When a final composition was achieved, scaled-up full-size cartoons were often made.

He was running an unusually large but efficient workshop of fifty pupils and assistants, many of whom later became significant artists, 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.

His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Raphael is best known for his Madonnas and for his large figure compositions in the Vatican.  Raphael’s most famous work is the School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura.

Raphael was clearly influenced by Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling in the course of painting the room. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

Sistine Madonna 1512