Length1h 37m
About this audiobook
Raphael was the artist who most closely resembled Pheidias. The Greeks said that the latter invented nothing; rather, he carried every kind of art invented by his forerunners to such a pitch of perfection that he achieved pure and perfect harmony. Those words, “pure and perfect harmony,” express, in fact, better than any others what Raphael brought to Italian art. From Perugino, he gathered all the weak grace and gentility of the Umbrian School, he acquired strength and certainty in Florence, and he created a style based on the fusion of Leonardo's and Michelangelo's lessons under the light of his own noble spirit. His compositions on the traditional theme of the Virgin and Child seemed intensely novel to his contemporaries, and only their time-honoured glory prevents us now from perceiving their originality. He has an even more magnificent claim in the composition and realisation of those frescos with which, from 1509, he adorned the Stanze and the Loggia at the Vatican. The sublime, which Michelangelo attained by his ardour and passion, Raphael attained by the sovereign balance of intelligence and sensibility. One of his masterpieces, The School of Athens, was created by genius: the multiple detail, the portrait heads, the suppleness of gesture, the ease of composition, the life circulating everywhere within the light are his most admirable and identifiable traits.
Audiobook details
GenreOther
Length1 hr 37 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction
10Raphael in the Service of Julius II: the Stanza della Segnatura – Disputation over the Most Holy Sacrament; School of Athens; Parnassus
2Biography
11Raphael in the Service of Julius II: the Stanza dell’Eliodoro
3Birth of Raphael and his First Works
12Raphael at Court
4His Departure for Perugia and his Collaboration with Perugino
13Death of Bramante and the Commissions by Leo X
5Raphael Travels to Siena – The Vision of a Knight
14Raphael and Antiquity
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6Raphael Returns to Urbino
15Raphael and Michelangelo
7Raphael in Florence
16Agostino Chigi and the Portraits
8Return to Perugia in 1505
17Raphael’s Last Years
9Raphael in Rome
