In his early works, Raphael remained faithful to the Perugino School. This is understandable, insofar as the stylistic characteristics which he had acquired from his teacher, namely a clear organization of the composition and the avoidance of excessive detail, also provided useful means through which to express the new spirit of the High Renaissance. In some works it is not easy to distinguish between the hand of Perugino and that of the young Raphael. The idealizing beauty of Peruginesque women, with their calmly contemplative expressions and strikingly small mouths, lingers on for some time in the faces of Raphael''s Madonnas (such as that in the Solly Collection and the Madonna Del Duca die Terranuova in Berlin).

          Slowly and tentatively, however, Raphael began to modify the style he had learned, gradually assimilating the new techniques of Leonardo and Michelangelo.

          He commenced work at the beginning of 1509, and from the very start broke away from the passionate love of detail so characteristic of Florentine painting and thus away from the style of Ghirlandaio, Botticelli and Piero Della Francesco. He developed instead an expansive style of composition which presented itself as a homogeneous and easily intelligible whole. In large, arched frescoes Raphael brought to life the subjects he had been instructed to paint: the theological Disputa (Disputation Concerning the Holy Sacrament) and its pendant, The School of Athens, portraying the secular sciences of philosophy. Aristotle and Plato are seen in conversation at the centre of the picture. Just as one might imagine a scholarly discourse taking place in Ancient Greece, they are walking - in true Peripatetic manner - through a lofty lyceum. The gesture which Plato is making with his upward-pointing finger is symbolic in meaning: he is pointing to the source of higher inspiration, the realm of ideas. Aristotle, on the other hand, is gesturing downwards, towards the starting-point of all the natural sciences.

          Like Michelangelo in the Sistine Ceiling, Raphael also incorporates a number of his contemporaries into his fresco. This Plato is probably a portrait of Leonardo, while Archimedes, bending down to draw on a slate tablet with a pair of dividers, may be recognized as Bramante. The figure immediately behind and slightly above is that of Federico Gonzaga. In addition to these and many others whose identities are now lost to us, Raphael also included himself, together with Sodoma, he looks out towards the viewer from beside the pillar at the extreme right-hand edge of the picture.

          "The Triumph of Galatea, which Raphael painted in 1512 in the palazzo, owned by the banker Agostino Chigi (the later Villa Farnesina) is perhaps the supreme evocation of the glorious spirit of antiquity. Much of the beauty of Galatea''s face lies in its hint of shyness and innocence, as if she were utterly unaware of her physical charms; the expression of devotion on her face is not unlike that of Leonardo''s angel in Verrocchio''s Baptism of Christ. The composition is clearly constructed upon the interplay of diagonals. The arrows strung in the bows of the putti establish directional lines which are taken up in the lower half of the picture. Thus the diagonal issuing from the arrow top left, for example, is continued in the dolphins'' reins, while the arrow top right is restated in the body of the twisting sea nymph. Raphael positions the head of the beautiful Galatea subtly but clearly at the exact centre of the composition.

         "The above-mentioned works may be seen as high points of what we understand as High Renaissance painting in its most evolved form. The transition to a new approach to art was complete. A painting was no longer to be the mere portrayal of an event, but was to translate and interpret its subject-matter in its composition. The movement of the body was now understood as an analogy for the animation of the spirit or the emotions; the external structure of a scene proclaimed its inner content. Everything in the picture was aimed at harmonious balance; each individual figure became an inseparable part of the whole. In this lies Raphael''s significant contribution to the painting of the High Renaissance.

           "Raphael''s style was by no means uninfluenced by Michelangelo''s painting. Following the preliminary unveiling of the Sistine ceiling in 1509, the figures in Raphael''s pictures acquire more voluminous bodies and more powerful arms, and there is a reduction in their numbers. The bold twisting position adopted by the young woman in the Expulsion of Heliodorus - a pose which reappears in reverse in Raphael''s late work, the Transfiguration - would be inconceivable without the influence of Michelangelo. Any question as to the cause of the widely-acknowledged sudden change in Raphael''s style after 1509 is removed for good, however, when we compare the Sibyls and Prophets executed by Raphael in the Capella Chigi in S. Maria Della Pace (1512) with those by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. In addition to the thematic kinship of these frescos with Michelangelo, Raphael''s new approach to body volumes and twisting poses makes patently clear the enormous impact which the Sistine ceiling had made upon him.

             "The young painter from Urbino thus adopted the artistic innovations of his elder colleagues, in particular those of Leonardo and Michelangelo, and synthesized them with his own aims. This did not pass Michelangelo by; in 1541, long after Raphael''s death, he was still complaining in a letter that "everything he knew about art he got from me."

               "After the death of Bramante in 1514, Raphael was appointed architect of St. Peter''s. He also became increasingly involved with the excavations and surveys of ruins in Rome. He was adroit enough to leave the remaining frescos in the Papal apartments more and more to his assistants, including his important pupil Giulio Romano. Although he provided the designs for the Burning of the Borgo in the third Stanza and for the decoration of the loggias in the Vatican, and although he no doubt supervised their execution, they were largely painted by his pupils.

              "Raphael produced a number of other important works during his time in Rome. These included Madonna paintings such as the Madonna Della Sedia (1513-14), and a series of famous portraits, including that of Julius II (1511-12), the Donna Velata, Baldassare Castiglione and Pope Leo X with Cardinals Gardinals Giulio deMedici and Luigi deRossi.He also provided the decorations for the upper zones of the lateral walls of the Sistine Chapel, which thus directly adjoined the works by his great rival Michelangelo. Instead of frescoes, however, Raphael''s contribution took the form of a tapestry cycle depicting scenes from the lives of the Apostles. Raphael''s cartoons for the cycle, which are today housed in London, were produced between 1515 and 1518. The tapestries were woven in Arras under Pieter van Aelst, and seven were hung in 1519.

             "One of the most frequently discussed and best-loved paintings of the Renaissance are Raphael''s so-called Sistine Madonna. For many people it remains the supreme example of western oil paintings, and its popularity is virtually as great as that of the Mona Lisa. All who have written about this picture have acknowledged the strange and baffling expressions worn by Mary and the child Jesus, although attempts to decipher their meaning have frequently been evasive - "visionary pictorial composition" was one interpretation.

              "The child is wild, teeth clenched, eyes blazing..." In the past, the pointing finger of the Holy Father was almost always interpreted as a gesture commending the worshipping viewer to the Madonna. It was also assumed that the Mother and Child were looking at the viewer. But it is precisely here that the puzzle arises. Why does Mary look so troubled? Why is the child, staring transfixedly out of the picture with his ruffled hair, appearing to shrink back?

            Raphael painted the picture for the high altar of S. Sisto in Piacenza. The small town had become part of the Vatican state in 1512, and the picture arose shortly afterwards. Some see a portrait of Pope Julius II in the Figure of St. Sixtus on the left, looking up at the Virgin and pointing out towards the viewer. Only recently have the questions surrounding this painting finally been resolved. As recent research by A. Prager has shown, the key to the mystery lies in the position in which the altarpiece originally stood. Taking again the intriguing question of what the Pope is pointing at and what the Mother and Child are looking at, the answer is as astonishing as it is persuasive.

            It has long been forgotten that, as in many churches, opposite the altarpiece in S. Sisto and above the rood screen at the far end of the chancel there stood a crucifix. The expressions of horror on the faces of Mother and Child are thus their reaction to the sight of death. It is interesting to note that, long before this successful interpretation, it was a writer, and not an art historian, who came closest to understanding the mystery: R. A. Schröder saw the "deepest horror" written in the face of the child, "before which even Death itself is frightened to death"."beautiful oil paintings