Raphael As A Product Of His Environment(s)

A new exhibit of the work of Raphael, as well as the work of those who influenced him, is a new way of looking at an artist whose impact on the art world is immeasurable. “‘Influence’ scarcely covers the relation to Raphael’s work not only of Michelangelo and the other titan of the High Renaissance, Leonardo, but also of Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi; Perugino, who may have been his teacher; Pinturicchio; and Fra Bartolommeo. The show, which incorporates works by most of those elders, demonstrates that the prodigy from the Marches extracted the formal essence of each man’s art to feed a synthetic style that would become a beau ideal of Western painting for the next four centuries.”