Editing Raphael (section)

==Background==
[[File:Giovanni Santi - Christ supported by two angels.jpg|thumb|[[Giovanni Santi]], Raphael's father; ''Christ supported by two angels'', {{Circa|1490}}]]
Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of [[Urbino]] in [[the Marches]] region,<ref>{{cite book|title=Urbino: The Story of a Renaissance City|first= June |last=Osborne|page=39 on the population, as a "few thousand" at most; even today it is only 15,000 without the students of the University}}</ref> where his father [[Giovanni Santi]] was court painter to the Duke. The reputation of the court had been established by [[Federico da Montefeltro]], a highly successful [[condottiere]] who had been created [[Duke of Urbino]] by [[Pope Sixtus IV]] – Urbino formed part of the [[Papal States]] – and who died the year before Raphael was born. The emphasis of Federico's court was more literary than artistic, but Giovanni Santi was a poet of sorts as well as a painter, and had written a rhymed chronicle of the life of Federico, and both wrote the texts and produced the decor for [[masque]]-like court entertainments. His poem to Federico shows him as keen to demonstrate awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and [[Early Netherlandish painting|Early Netherlandish artists]] as well. In the very small court of Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters.<ref>Jones and Penny, pp. 1–2</ref>

Federico was succeeded by his son [[Guidobaldo da Montefeltro]], who married [[Elisabetta Gonzaga]], daughter of the ruler of [[Mantua]], the most brilliant of the smaller Italian courts for both music and the visual arts. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture. Growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by [[Giorgio Vasari|Vasari]].<ref>Vasari:207 & passim</ref> Court life in Urbino at just after this period was to become set as the model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through [[Baldassare Castiglione]]'s depiction of it in his classic work ''[[The Book of the Courtier]]'', published in 1528. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, and they became good friends. Raphael became close to other regular visitors to the court: [[Bernardo Dovizi|Pietro Bibbiena]] and [[Pietro Bembo]], both later [[Cardinal (Catholicism)|cardinals]], were already becoming well known as writers, and would later be in Rome during Raphael's period there. Raphael mixed easily in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a full [[Renaissance humanism|humanistic education]] however; it is unclear how easily he read Latin.<ref>Jones & Penny:204</ref>