RAPHAEL SANZIO (1483-152o), the great Italian painter, was the son of Giovanni Sanzio or Santi, a painter in the ducal city of Urbino. The house of Giovanni Santi, where Raphael was born (April 6, 1483) still exists at Urbino in the Contrada del Monte, and is now the property of the municipality. For many years both before and-after the birth of Raphael (April 6, Urbino was one of the chief centres in Italy of intellectual and artistic activity, thanks to its highly cultured rulers, Duke Fede rigo II. of Montefeltro and his son Guidobaldo, who succeeded him in 1482. Giovanni Santi was a welcome guest at this minia ture but splendid court, and the rich treasures which the palace contained, familiar to Raphael from his earliest years, helped to form and foster his early love for art. Raphael's boyish admira ation of the oil-paintings of Jan Van Eyck and Justus of Ghent may have had something to do with the miniature-like care and delicacy with which some of his earliest works, such as the "Apollo and Marsyas," were executed.
Though Raphael lost his father at the age of eleven, he cer tainly owed to him a great part of his early training. The altar piece painted by Giovanni for the church of Gradara, and a fresco, now preserved in the Santi house at Urbino, are clearly prototypes of some cf Raphael's most graceful paintings of the Madonna and Child. On the death of his father in 1494 Raphael was left in the care of his stepmother (his mother, Magia Ciarla, died in 1491) and of his uncle, a priest called Bartolomeo.
About 1500 Raphael began to execute independent works. The portrait of Tangino in the Borghese Gallery, Rome, was prob ably painted about 1500. Four pictures for churches at Citta di Castello appear to have been painted in the years The first is a gild-banner painted on one side with the Trinity, and below, kneeling figures of S. Sebastian and S. Rocco; on the reverse is a Creation of Eve, very like Perugino in style, but possessing more grace and breadth of treatment. These are still in the church of S. Trinita. Also for Citta. di Castello were the coronation of S. Niccolo Tolentino, now destroyed, though studies for it exist at Oxford and Lille (Gaz. d. B. Arts, 2878, i. p. and the Crucifixion, now in the National Gallery (Mond col lection), painted for the church of S. Domenico and signed RAPHAEL VRBINAS P. It is a panel 8 ft. 6 in. high by 5 ft. 5 in. wide, and contains noble figures of the Virgin, St. John, St. Jerome and St. Mary Magdalene. The fourth painting exe cuted for this town, for the church of S. Francesco, is the ex quisitely beautiful and highly finished Sposalizio, now in the Brera at Milan, signed and dated RAPHAEL VRBINAS MDIIII. This is closely copied both in composition and detail from Peru gino's painting of the same subject now at Caen, but is far superior to it in sweetness of expression and grace of attitude. The Temple of Jerusalem, a domed octagon with outer ambu latory in Perugino's picture, is reproduced with slight alterations by Raphael, and the attitudes and grouping of the figures are almost exactly the same in both. The Connestabile Madonna (sold to the tsar of Russia in 1871) is one of Raphael's finest works, painted during his Perugian period ; it is a round panel. The motive, the Virgin reading a book of hours, is a favourite one with him, as it was with his father Giovanni.