Raphael
Italian painter and architect (1483–1520)
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Italian: [raffaˈɛllo ˈsantsjo da urˈbiːno]; March 28 or 6 April 1483 – 6 April 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael (UK: RAF-ay-əl, US: RAF-ee-əl, RAY-fee-, RAH-fy-EL), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.
His father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the ruler of the small but highly cultured city of Urbino. He died when Raphael was eleven, and Raphael seems to have played a role in managing the family workshop from this point. He probably trained in the workshop of Pietro Perugino, and was described as a fully trained "master" by 1500. He worked in or for several cities in north Italy until in 1508 he moved to Rome at the invitation of Pope Julius II, to work on the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican. He was given a series of important commissions there and elsewhere in the city, and began to work as an architect. He was still at the height of his powers at his death in 1520.
Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his early death at 37, leaving a large body of work.
“Raphael” enters the record as italian painter and architect (1483–1520). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Raphael, Italian and painter can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Raphael” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Raphael, Italian and painter provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5597. VIAF identifies the subject as 64055977. The Library of Congress control number is n79041756. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 2 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1483, 1520, 1500 and 1508.
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This entry incorporates text from “Raphael” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.