| Raffaello Sanzio, known as Raphael (1483-1520) Born in Urbino, the son of an artist, Raphael was called to Rome in 1508 to carry out a number of commissions for Pope Julius II. Thereafter his work was in great demand from wealthy Roman merchants and noblemen. Influenced by both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, he nevertheless established his own distinctive style and became one of the great Classical artists of the High Renaissance. Galatea (1511-12) is a fresco commissioned by the Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi, to decorate the wall of a loggia at his riverside villa. It shows the nymph, Galatea, dramatically surrounded by "amorini, mermen, hippocamps and nereids" and survives today in what is now called the Villa Farnesina, after a later owner. |