A r t G a l l e r y
Young Italian artists in Australia
Raffaello
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the Renaissance era. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.
Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career.
The Madonna of the Rose is a 1518-1520 painting, now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Ironically, the rose in this painting and the entire lower portion, was added at a later date by an unknown artist
Holy Family below the Oak was painted in 1518. Leaning on a classical ruin, Saint Joseph looks at the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child in her lap. Jesus, in turn, is receiving a roll with the words Ecce Agnus Dei from Saint John.
The Madonna della seggiola or Madonna della sedia is housed in the Palazzo Pitti collection in Florence. It depicts Mary embracing the child Christ, while the young John the Baptist devoutly watches.
