Editing Raphael (section)

===Vatican "Stanze"===
In 1508, Raphael moved to Rome, where he resided for the rest of his life. He was invited by the new pope, [[Julius&nbsp;II]], perhaps at the suggestion of his architect [[Donato Bramante]], then engaged on [[St. Peter's Basilica]], who came from just outside Urbino and was distantly related to Raphael.<ref>Jones & Penny:49, differing somewhat from Gould:208 on the timing of his arrival</ref> Unlike Michelangelo, who had been kept lingering in Rome for several months after his first summons,<ref>Vasari:247</ref> Raphael was immediately commissioned by Julius to fresco what was intended to become the Pope's private library at the [[Vatican Palace]].<ref>Julius was no great reader—an inventory compiled after his death has a total of 220 books, large for the time, but hardly requiring such a receptacle. There was no room for bookcases on the walls, which were in cases in the middle of the floor, destroyed in the 1527 Sack of Rome. Jones & Penny:4952</ref> This was a much larger and more important commission than any he had received before; he had only painted one altarpiece in Florence itself. Several other artists and their teams of assistants were already at work on different rooms, many painting over recently completed paintings commissioned by Julius's loathed predecessor, [[Pope Alexander VI|Alexander VI]], whose contributions, and [[coat of arms|arms]], Julius was determined to efface from the palace.<ref>Jones & Penny:49</ref> Michelangelo, meanwhile, had been commissioned to paint the [[Sistine Chapel ceiling]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Graham-Dixon |first1=Andrew |author1-link=Andrew Graham-Dixon |title=Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel |date=2008 |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson |location=London |isbn=9781602393684 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d1Rh-q0jsN0C |access-date=January 10, 2021}}</ref>
[[File:4 Estancia del Sello (El Parnaso).jpg|thumb|left|''[[The Parnassus]]'', 1511, [[Stanza della Segnatura]]]]
This first of the famous "Stanze" or "[[Raphael Rooms]]" to be painted, now known as the ''[[Stanza della Segnatura]]'' after its use in Vasari's time, was to make a stunning impact on Roman art, and remains generally regarded as his greatest masterpiece, containing ''[[The School of Athens]]'', ''[[The Parnassus]]'' and the ''[[Disputation of the Holy Sacrament|Disputa]]''. Raphael was then given further rooms to paint, displacing other artists including Perugino and Signorelli. He completed a sequence of three rooms, each with paintings on each wall and often the ceilings too, increasingly leaving the work of painting from his detailed drawings to the large and skilled workshop team he had acquired, who added a fourth room, probably only including some elements designed by Raphael, after his early death in 1520. The death of Julius in 1513 did not interrupt the work at all, as he was succeeded by Raphael's last pope, the [[Medici]] [[Pope Leo X]], with whom Raphael formed an even closer relationship, and who continued to commission him.<ref>Jones & Penny:49–128</ref> Raphael's friend Cardinal Bibbiena was also one of Leo's old tutors, and a close friend and advisor.

In the course of painting the room, Raphael was clearly influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. Vasari said Bramante let him into the chapel secretly. Raphael completed the first section of his work in 1511 and the reaction of other artists to the daunting force of Michelangelo was the dominating question in Italian art for the following few decades. Raphael, who had already shown his gift for absorbing influences into his own personal style, rose to the challenge perhaps better than any other artist. One of the first and clearest instances was the portrait in ''The School of Athens'' of Michelangelo himself, as [[Heraclitus]], which seems to draw clearly from the Sybils and ''ignudi'' of the Sistine ceiling. Other figures in that and later paintings in the room show the same influences, but as still cohesive with a development of Raphael's own style.<ref>Jones & Penny:101–05</ref> Michelangelo accused Raphael of plagiarism and years after Raphael's death, complained in a letter that "everything he knew about art he got from me", although other quotations show more generous reactions.<ref>Blunt:76, Jones & Penny:103–05</ref>

These very large and complex compositions have been regarded ever since as among the supreme works of the [[grand manner]] of the High [[The Renaissance|Renaissance]], and the "classic art" of the post-antique West. They give a highly [[idealism|idealised]] depiction of the forms represented, and the compositions, though very carefully conceived in [[drawing]]s, achieve "sprezzatura", a term invented by his friend Castiglione, who defined it as "a certain nonchalance which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless ...".<ref>Book of the Courtier 1:26 [http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/sprezzatura-castiglione.htm The whole passage] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071224192937/http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/sprezzatura-castiglione.htm |date=December 24, 2007 }}</ref> According to [[Michael Levey]], "Raphael gives his [figures] a superhuman clarity and grace in a universe of Euclidian certainties".<ref>[[Michael Levey|Levey, Michael]]; ''Early Renaissance'', p. 197 ,1967, Penguin</ref> The painting is nearly all of the highest quality in the first two rooms, but the later compositions in the Stanze, especially those involving dramatic action, are not entirely as successful either in conception or their execution by the workshop.<ref>Ettlinger & Ettlinger: 177–180</ref>

<gallery widths="200px" heights="200px" perrow="4">
File:Raffael Stanza della Segnatura.jpg|[[Stanza della Segnatura]]
File:Raphael - The Mass at Bolsena.jpg|''[[The Mass at Bolsena]]'', 1514, Stanza di Eliodoro
File:Raphael - Deliverance of Saint Peter.jpg|''[[Liberation of Saint Peter (Raphael)|Liberation of Saint Peter]]'', 1514, Stanza di Eliodoro
File:Raphael - Fire in the Borgo.jpg|''[[The Fire in the Borgo]]'', 1514, Stanza dell'incendio del Borgo, painted by the workshop to Raphael's design
</gallery>