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Raphael Santi (1483-1520) Arrived In Florence At A Time When Leonardo Da ...

Raphael Santi (1483-1520) arrived in Florence at a time when Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were ‘setting up new standards in art of which nobody had ever dreamed.' Determined to study and work hard to achieve such standards, Raphael became one of the most renowned painters of the High Renaissance.
In ‘The School of Athens', ancient philosophers and scientists, including Plato and Aristotle, discuss their ideas. Commissioned by Pope Julius II, this fresco, and others commissioned at the same time, brings together ancient philosophy with Christianity.

However, Raphael is mainly remembered for the beauty of his human figures, expressed to near-perfection in paintings such as ‘The Madonna del Granduca' and ‘The Nymph Galatea'. Unlike his predecessors, Raphael painted to an ideal of beauty, rather than a realistic copying of models. In the latter painting he achieved a feeling of freedom of movement in the human figures that artists before him had been unable to achieve.

Throughout the period of the Renaissance, sculpted art, with its emphasis on the human body, was of great significance, particularly in Florence. Sculptors and painters alike needed to be students of science in order to execute the human form in its muscular or sensual realism. Thus, Pollaiuolo's ‘Hercules' is a study in muscle and sinew, and Donatello's ‘David', set in bronze, shows a new confidence of style with its very human pose and languid quality. Michelangelo captured the final moments of human life in ‘The Dying Slave', a sculpture that epitomises the sculptor's ability to express human emotion in stone:

It is difficult to think of this work as being a statue of cold and lifeless stone, as we stand before it in the Louvre in Paris. It seems to move before our eyes, and yet to remain at rest.
By looking at the history of sculpture and art in this period, as the human figure develops from two-dimensional representations to the beginnings of realism with Giotto, the studied anatomies of

Leonardo and Michelangelo, and the beauty of Raphael, we can see reflected the changing attitudes towards man in religion and philosophy. In turn, art itself helped to create further changes, opening up ideas and ways of thinking and changing the way that people think. The idea of man being in charge of his own destiny ‘spread into society, modifying customs, penetrating politics and changing them.' A new freedom began to be felt and this is not only expressed in art but also in literature, theatre and music. Thus, we can clearly see through the examples above, how culture is constructed out of the social ideas and beliefs of its time.

Bibliography

Englander, D., Norman, D., O'Day, R. & Owens, W. R., (eds) (1990), Culture and Belief in Europe 1450-1600, Blackwell, Oxford
Gombrich, E. H., (1990), The Story of Art, Phaidon, Oxford
Koenigsberger, H. G., Mosse, G. L. & Bowler, G. Q.


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