["Pomp and Circumstance"]
Here lies Raphael.
While he lived, nature believed itself conquered.
Now that he is dead, it too fears that it will die.
There was once a great temple in Rome
which was dedicated to all of the gods.
Beneath its perfect classical cupola
lie the mortal remains of an artist
who in his short life achieved a delicate and rare balance,
a serene perfection,
a style both natural and ideal,
and a charming spontaneous beauty.
In memory of the ancient Olympus
on the threshold of eternity,
the pantheon is now the final resting place
of the most divine of painters.
Until the middle of the 15th century,
Urbino was a small brick and stone-built town
nestling amid the green hills of an area of the Marche,
squeezed between Romagna, Tuscany, and Umbria.
Then the Montefeltro family took a hand in history
and transformed it into a city in the form of a palace.
Every last street, house, and tiniest corner of Urbino
played a role in its quiet harmony,
a harmony where elegant proportions, architectural rhythms,
and the relationship between city and countryside
seem spontaneous and natural
and are yet an outstanding example
of beautifully conceived design.
Raphael was born at three o'clock in the morning
on Good Friday, March the 28th, 1483, in this house.
It remains beautifully preserved,
its small paved courtyard ennobled by a decorative well.
The old kitchen and plastered rooms are still there,
alive with a certain cozy domesticity.
There are even a few old pieces of his furnishings.
Piero della Francesca's solemn altarpiece
had already adorned the Renaissance Church of San Bernardino
for a good ten years by the time Raphael was born.
This splendid work was both a masterpiece of 15th century art
and the most prized commission made by patron,
Duke Federico da Montefeltro,
who transformed the small and secluded court of Urbino
into a sophisticated international center of culture and the arts.
The duke was so impressed that he made it known
that he wished to be buried beside this extraordinary painting.
Federico, who was always depicted in profile in paintings,
to cover up the fact that he had lost an eye during a joust,
was a true prince and an enlightened cultured gentleman.
It is to him we owe the building of the family palace,
on which work began in 1465.
The peerlessly lovely wooden tarsier of his studiolo
tell his story in a symbolic manner.
Like so many great men of war,
Montefeltro had a great love of peace,
even though he spent many years in armor.
Now he could finally cast off the trappings of war
and abandon himself to the muses,
open the bookcases and the instruments of art
and learning are on hand.
This small corner situated between the saloons
was the duke's favorite.
Around it, thanks to the talents of Dalmatian architect Luciano Laurana
and Sienese architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini,
rises the most important and perfect example
of civil architecture of the 15th century,
a place to which artists from all over Italy, Spain and Flanders flocked.
These include the great Piero della Francesca,
who gave it the cerebral flagellation,
Pedro Berughetti, the official portraitist of the duke,
sophisticated sculptures and inlay artists,
and then Justus of Ghent with the Communion of the Apostles,
Paolo Uccello with the profanation of the host,
and many others.
Just like the fascinating yet enigmatic panel
with the design for a silent urban view,
another masterpiece of the 15th century ornate style
Federico da Montefeltro's Palazzo Ducale
embodies the wonders of an ideal city of the Renaissance,
where divine proportion reigns,
measuring itself against the breadth of nature.
Raphael had been soaked in the spirit of the palace
since he was a young child.
The light streaming in the huge windows to the white painted halls
illuminated mind and heart alike.
The same light drew him to look out beyond the walls to the hill,
the waters of the Metauro, and the hairpin bends
winding their way up to the mountain passes of the Apennines.
Raphael's father was one Giovanni Santi,
a respected painter and intellectual,
an artist at the court of Montefeltro.
He also had a thorough knowledge of international art.
Giovanni Santi fitted in perfectly
in the cultural and artistic context of Urbino.
In fact, his wonderfully limpid altarpieces
are clearly influenced by Piero della Francesca's Madonna and Saints.
Raphael spent his days either in the halls of the palace itself
or at his father's studio.
His childhood games provided him with much of his training as a painter.
He learned how to hold a brush, how to grind colors,
and prepare a board or wall for a fresco from his father.
And, in fact, a fresco painted on the wall in the house
where he was born is considered one of his first known works,
depicting the delicate profile of a very young Mary
cradling the sleeping Christ child.
This portrait also marks the start of Raphael's poetic obsession
with the Madonna and child, a theme which continually brought back
to the artist the sweet yet sad memory of the lost caresses
of his mother, who died in 1491 when he was just
eight and a half years old.
Less than three years later,
in 1494, Giovanni Santi, who had remarried in the meantime,
also died. At just 11 years old,
Raphael found himself alone in the world. He was still a child,
yet heir to his father's studio, taking his first steps
in his career as an artist and engaged in an emotional battle
with his argumentative stepmother. This marked the beginning of a long
period of study and learning, during which Raphael built on his early
apprenticeship in Urbino through contact with the most famous artist of the moment,
Pietro Perugino.
Fano, a tiny, delicious court of Malatesta, was home to this
stylistic passage.
In the Church of Santa Maria Nuova, we find
one beside the other a visitation painted by Giovanni Santi
and a good example of his style, and two altarpieces
by Perugino, his son's new master.
One was the sweet, gentle enunciation.
The other, more importantly, the very solemn,
sacred conversation.
In the predella of this work, painted in 1497
and telling small, amiable stories from the life of Mary,
we see the hand of the very young but self-assured pupil,
the first seeds of a spring that was just about to burst
into bloom.
.
Raphael left the Marche with Perugino
for Umbria. He began to frequent
the austere but beautiful town of Perugia, a city
to which he was to become closely linked.
In the shadow of the Palazzo dei Priori,
he studied the ancient fables depicted by Giovanni Pisano
in the monumental marble fountain in the piazza.
.
While his master, Pietro Perugino, was completing his greatest
masterpiece, the decoration of the Collegio del Cambio,
Banker's Guild Hall. Raphael watched
as a huge variety of ornamental friezes and motifs from archaeology
flourished until they almost completely covered every available space.
.
Perugino's self-portrait appears on the wall
where the lanky heroes from the classical myths and the Bible are lined up
like a mixed yet sophisticated guard of honor.
.
Raphael, like all of the Perugino's pupils, was involved in the project.
.
By the time he was sixteen,
the precocious Raphael was referred to as Magister
or Master in his contracts, and although he remained
in contact with Perugino, was already running his own studio.
.