Raphael was one of the greatest painters and architects of the Italian Renaissance, forming the great triumvirate with da Vinci and Michelangelo. He was renowned for harmonious compositions and idealized beauty, producing an extraordinary body of Madonna paintings and frescoes.
Raphael's Sistine Madonna is among the most celebrated Madonna paintings in Western art, while his fresco The School of Athens in the Vatican embodies Renaissance humanism at its finest. He died young at 37, yet left behind a rich and profound artistic legacy that shaped Western aesthetic standards for centuries.
