Raphael Biography: The Middle Years

Once he had finished his training, Raphael took a job in Città di Castello working on an altarpiece at the church of San Nicola da Tolentino. Very little of this work remains, but over the next few years he worked on several more paintings for other churches there and in Perugia. He began getting more and more commissions for different works, and so began painting a wider range of paintings, from large frescoes to smaller “cabinet paintings”, Madonnas, and portraits.

From 1504 to 1508, he spent a lot of time in Florence, where he absorbed even more influences. Not only did he take from the works of Fra Bartolomeo and Leonardo da Vinci, he also began to add more of the general Florentine style into his paintings. His figures began to gain more elaborate positions and expressions, making them more and more lifelike as he combined the influences of the masters he met as well as the cities he passed through.

Raphael may have taken some inspiration from the other great master of his period, Michelangelo, except Michelangelo was paranoid and disliked his younger peer, so any sway Michelangelo might have had over Raphael’s style likely came solely from Raphael viewing his paintings. Such inspiration might be detected in an odd work of Raphael, called Deposition of Christ, which is a far cry from his usual style.

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