by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on August 21, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Raphael's paintings are famous for making difficulty look resolved. A Madonna's interlocking bodies, a philosopher's gesture, a pope's lowered eyes or an altarpiece crowded with witnesses can appear so inevitable that the labour behind it disappears. Yet Raphael's art was built through repeated acts of testing: sketches on paper, full-size cartoons, transferred outlines, geometrical plans, layered colour, changes made after painting began and, increasingly in Rome, collaboration with other artists.
To understand his paintings is therefore to look beyond a list of masterpieces. A Raphael can be a small oil panel made for close devotion, a portrait on canvas, an altarpiece divided and moved, or a wall painted in fresco by Raphael and assistants. Supports have been thinned, transferred and cradled; colours have faded; varnishes have altered; copies have preserved lost states. “Raphael” names an artist, but on some late works it also names the governing intelligence of a highly organised studio.
Modern technical research does not destroy the grace of these pictures. It shows how grace was made.
At a Glance
- Full nameRaffaello Sanzio or Santi
- Life1483–1520
- Principal centresUrbino, Umbria, Florence and Rome
- Major painting formatsdevotional panels, altarpieces, portraits, fresco cycles and designs realised by assistants
- Common portable supportsprepared wood panel; canvas became more important in later portraiture
- Main binding medium in examined early panelsdrying oil, not the egg tempera once often assumed
- Typical early panel preparationanimal-glue gesso with an off-white priming containing lead white and lead-tin yellow
- Design methodsfree sketches, detailed studies, cartoons, pouncing, tracing, squaring and geometrical underdrawing
- Major wall-painting centresVatican Palace and Villa Farnesina
- Leading Roman collaboratorsGiulio Romano, Giovan Francesco Penni, Giovanni da Udine, Perino del Vaga and others
- Attribution language matters“by Raphael,” “Raphael and workshop,” “workshop after Raphael's design” and “copy after Raphael” describe different evidence
- Modern study methodsinfrared reflectography, x-radiography, microscopy, pigment and binder analysis, support examination and provenance research
- Key cautionno single technique, pigment or graceful face proves authorship by itself
Contents
- Early foundations in Urbino and Umbria
- The early altarpiece as a constructed object
- Panel preparation
- Oil rather than the old tempera assumption
- Drawing before painting
- What is a cartoon?
- Pouncing and the Saint Catherine
- Direct geometrical planning
- Underdrawing as evidence
- Changes of mind
List of Raphael Paintings
Early foundations in Urbino and Umbria
Raphael grew up in the court city of Urbino and developed within Central Italian workshop culture. Early commissions around Città di Castello and Perugia demanded altarpieces, processional imagery and small devotional works.
The clarity associated with Perugino mattered: balanced figures, spacious landscapes, calm contours and comprehensible sacred narrative. Raphael learned these principles well enough to revise them from inside.
His early paintings already show unusual attention to how figures relate through gaze, interval and gesture. Harmony is never only prettiness; it is the organisation of attention.
The early altarpiece as a constructed object
An altarpiece was not merely a large rectangular painting. It could include a main panel, predella scenes, frame, gilding and architectural relation to a chapel.
The Oddi and Ansidei ensembles joined sacred hierarchy to the conditions of worship. The Baglioni altarpiece later carried family commemoration and civic meaning. Several such works were removed, divided or reframed.
Understanding the original object prevents modern museums from becoming the assumed destination. A detached predella scene was designed beneath and beside other images.
Panel preparation
Technical examination of Raphael's early National Gallery works found recurring use of wooden supports covered with gesso bound in animal glue. An off-white imprimatura, or priming layer, commonly contains lead white and lead-tin yellow.[1]
These preparations gave Raphael a controlled surface on which drawing and translucent oil colour could operate. The warm, pale priming could contribute to luminosity rather than being completely buried.
Preparation is not a neutral prelude. Its colour, absorbency and smoothness affect every layer above.
Oil rather than the old tempera assumption
Earlier scholarship sometimes described Raphael's early technique as egg tempera. Scientific analysis of examined National Gallery panels instead identified drying oils.[1]
For the Ansidei Madonna, gas chromatography–mass spectrometry identified walnut oil as the binder across a wide range of pigments.[2]
Oil allowed both opaque modelling and translucent glaze. Raphael could build saturated reds gradually, soften flesh and let costly blue retain depth.
Drawing before painting
Raphael's surviving drawings show that apparent ease was prepared through abundant investigation. He sketched whole arrangements, isolated limbs, tested drapery and refined heads.
A sheet need not map directly onto one finished work. Ideas move, reverse, combine or disappear. Some drawings explore; others present a resolved design to patron or assistant.
The relationship between paper and paint is therefore specific to each object. A similar pose is evidence of thinking, not always a one-to-one transfer.
What is a cartoon?
In Renaissance practice, a cartoon is a full-size drawing used to transfer a composition. It is not a comic image.
Artists could prick outlines and dust charcoal through the holes, producing dots on the prepared support. They could also trace with a stylus over an interposed darkened sheet. Squaring helped enlarge or coordinate designs.[3]
Cartoons allowed Raphael's precision to travel from paper to panel or wall. They also made collaboration possible by giving assistants a controlled foundation.
Pouncing and the Saint Catherine
Raphael's cartoon for Saint Catherine of Alexandria is pricked for transfer. Infrared examination of the London painting reveals corresponding pounced dots beneath parts of the paint.[3]
Transfer did not eliminate invention. Raphael changed the head and facial features, and he omitted a knot of drapery that had been faintly drawn and pricked.[3]
The sequence is a perfect correction to the myth of effortless execution. A resolved full-size model remained open to decisions at the panel.
Direct geometrical planning
Not every painting depends on a surviving transferred cartoon. The Garvagh Madonna has a precise geometrical underdrawing, but the National Gallery found no sign that the final design was transferred from paper.[4]
Ruled lines, compasses and measured axes could establish architecture and figure relation directly on the support. Geometry gave Raphael a framework; it did not mechanise the result.
Human tenderness and mathematical order cooperate. The calm of a Madonna group often rests on invisible planning.
Underdrawing as evidence
Infrared reflectography can reveal carbon-rich or otherwise responsive drawing beneath paint. It shows where outlines were transferred, drawn freehand or changed.
Not all materials appear equally under infrared. Absence of a visible line does not prove absence of planning. Different wavelengths and analytical methods recover different information.
Underdrawing matters because it records thought before colour concealed it. It can also distinguish Raphael's habits from those of imitators or assistants.
Changes of mind
The Italian term [pentimento](/glossary/) describes an artist's alteration. Raphael's paintings contain many.
In the Ansidei Madonna, cross-sections show green landscape beneath grey architecture, proving that the architectural setting was introduced after painting had begun.[2] In the Garvagh Madonna, landscape lies beneath central architecture in another revised plan.[4]
Such changes counter the idea that Raphael merely executed perfect drawings. He could reconsider the entire spatial meaning of a picture during paint.
The Ansidei Madonna's layered red
The deep red of Saint John the Baptist's robe in the Ansidei Madonna was built with semi-opaque layers completed by translucent glazes.[2]
Layering gives colour body and depth. Light enters upper films, reflects from lower passages and returns altered to the eye.
What looks like “Raphael red” is therefore not a single tube colour. It is material sequence, and aging can change how those layers now relate.
Natural ultramarine
Raphael used expensive natural ultramarine made from lapis lazuli, imported from mines in what is now Afghanistan, in the Virgin's blue drapery of the Ansidei Madonna.[2]
Cost mattered because pigment could carry devotional honour and patronal expenditure. Blue was both colour and material value.
Raphael still had to control it pictorially. Preciousness alone cannot create spatially convincing cloth.
Gold, silver and unusual pigments
The same altarpiece uses powdered gold and silver in decorative borders. Analysis also found bismuth in a grey architectural colour, an unusual silvery material.[2]
These findings expand the image of Raphael beyond a painter of soft flesh and ideal design. His surfaces could incorporate metallic effects and technically adventurous mixtures.
The material richness was integrated rather than merely displayed. Ornament supports hierarchy and attention.
Florence and the transformation of figure groups
In Florence, Raphael encountered Leonardo's investigations of bodily interaction and Michelangelo's forceful anatomy. He responded with Madonna groups whose gestures circulate among mother, Christ and Baptist.
The Madonna of the Meadow, Madonna of the Goldfinch and Belle Jardinière may share triangular structure, but they are not repetitions. Each redistributes gaze, touch, landscape and signs of the Passion.
Raphael's development is visible through variation. Reusing a problem allowed increasingly exact solutions.
Landscape as structure
Landscape in Raphael is rarely just a pleasant background. Horizons establish scale; paths and rivers continue gesture; blue distance opens around heads.
In Florentine Madonnas, the landscape permits intimate bodies to remain breathable. In portraits, it can connect elite presence to territory or cultivated nature.
Technical evidence sometimes shows landscape painted first and architecture added later. Space was an adjustable component of meaning.
Portrait painting
Raphael's portraits range from strict frontal court likenesses to turning young men, paired spouses and psychologically concentrated popes.
He adapted supports and formats. Early sitters often appear on panel; several mature friendship portraits are on canvas. Costume, hand placement and background are never interchangeable decorations.
The most striking likenesses do not reveal a secret soul. They organise the social conditions of looking: who may approach, who returns the gaze and how rank becomes bodily.
Canvas and late intimacy
The Prado's Late Raphael research emphasised the painterly quality of Raphael's canvas portraits of friends and reported no detectable workshop help in that group.[5]
Canvas could encourage breadth and soft shadow, especially against dark fields. The support also travelled and aged differently from wood.
Object facts remain essential. Some works now on canvas began on panel and were later transferred, so current appearance must not be mistaken for original choice.
Moving from Florence to Rome
Raphael's arrival in Rome in 1508 expanded every dimension of painting: patronage, architectural scale, intellectual programme and studio organisation.
The Stanza della Segnatura required four walls and a vault to act together. Theology, philosophy, poetry and law had to remain distinct while belonging to one room.
This was not simply a larger panel. Fresco demanded designs coordinated with plaster, architecture, viewing height and other workers.
What fresco requires
True fresco places water-based pigment on fresh lime plaster. As the plaster carbonates, colour becomes physically bound into the wall.
Because workable plaster remains fresh for limited time, painters divide a scene into daily areas called giornate. Edges, cartoons and sequence must be planned in relation to drying.
Some details can be added on dry plaster, but these passages often age differently. Wall painting is both image and building skin.
The Raphael Rooms
The four Vatican rooms were painted by Raphael and his pupils between 1508 and 1524, extending beyond Raphael's death.[6]
The Segnatura walls contain the most concentrated early phase. The Heliodorus room brought dramatic light and contemporary papal politics. Later rooms depended more heavily on the studio.
Calling all four simply “frescoes by Raphael” hides chronology and labour. Each wall needs its own attribution.
Scale without confusion
Raphael's great fresco groups remain legible despite crowds. He builds centres, counter-centres, directional gazes and intervals of open space.
Architecture does not merely surround figures; it measures them and channels movement. Colour helps separate clusters without breaking unity.
The apparent naturalness is the result of hierarchy. Viewers know where to look even when they cannot immediately name every person.
The cartoon at monumental scale
Large frescoes required full-size or sectional cartoons. Transferring them divided invention from execution without severing the relationship.
An assistant could follow contours while Raphael supervised colour, adjusted a head or painted a crucial passage. Another wall might be delegated more completely.
The cartoon was therefore both artistic record and management instrument.
Raphael's Roman studio
By the late 1510s Raphael was managing painting, architecture, antiquarian study, tapestry designs and patron demands. Giulio Romano, Giovan Francesco Penni, Giovanni da Udine, Perino del Vaga and others carried substantial responsibilities.
Their work was not uniform. Giovanni excelled in ornament and natural festoons; Giulio developed muscular figures and bold spatial invention; Penni helped translate designs across large projects.
The workshop enlarged Raphael's reach while making attribution more complex.
Design versus execution
A work can be “Raphael” in conception and another painter in execution. The Farnesina's Cupid and Psyche loggia was designed as a whole by Raphael but painted extensively by studio artists.[7]
This distinction does not demote design to an idea without material effect. Composition, narrative sequence and relation to architecture govern everything that follows.
Nor should execution be treated as neutral filling. Individual assistants made aesthetic decisions on the wall.
The late altarpieces
Late works such as the Sistine Madonna, Madonna of Foligno and Transfiguration push sacred painting toward theatrical encounter.
Cloud, gesture and earthly spectators connect divine apparition to the viewer's zone. Larger bodies and more dramatic contrast answer distance and altar setting.
Workshop participation varies. The Transfiguration remained in Raphael's studio at his death, making completion history inseparable from interpretation.
How attribution is built
No scientific instrument flashes “Raphael.” Attribution combines evidence.
Provenance can connect an object to commission or early ownership. Stylistic comparison evaluates drawing, anatomy, colour and handling. Infrared and x-rays reveal construction. Pigment and support analysis test whether materials fit date and practice. Copies may preserve earlier states.[8]
Agreement grows when independent strands converge.
The Madonna of the Pinks case
The National Gallery's attribution of the Madonna of the Pinks rested on expert visual judgement, provenance and detailed technical study.[8]
Underdrawing and changes of mind were especially important because they showed a creative process characteristic of Raphael rather than mechanical copying.
The case demonstrates why a beautiful surface alone is insufficient. Copies can look convincing; invention beneath the surface may distinguish the originating work.
X-radiography
X-rays respond particularly to dense materials such as lead white, revealing aspects of paint structure concealed from view.
They can show altered hands, clothing, backgrounds, panel construction and later damage. In portraits, x-rays have transformed understanding of revisions beneath apparently simple fields.
Interpretation requires expertise. A bright x-ray passage reflects material density, not automatically the chronological first stage.
Infrared reflectography
Infrared can penetrate certain paint layers and reveal responsive underdrawing. It is particularly valuable for comparing a panel with surviving studies or cartoons.
The method may expose free changes, transferred dots and ruled geometry. It can also show where a painter ignored the drawing.
Technical images are not x-ray vision into intention. They preserve physical marks from which intention is cautiously inferred.
Paint cross-sections
A microscopic sample taken from existing damage can be embedded in resin, polished and viewed from the side. The resulting cross-section shows layer order.[2]
This is how researchers can establish that green landscape lies beneath later grey architecture or that a red was built through multiple films.
The sample is tiny, so its information is local. A cross-section from one area cannot automatically describe the entire painting.
What age does to colour
Ultramarine can blanch, red lakes can fade and varnish can yellow. Abrasion may reduce glazes, making modelling harsher than Raphael intended.[4]
Cleaning can reveal relationships long hidden, but no treatment returns an object to the exact day it left the studio. Materials have changed chemically and physically.
The Raphael we see is historical: original work carried through time.
Transfers and structural intervention
Several paintings once on wood were transferred to canvas or modern rigid supports. The procedure removed most or all of the original panel and attached the paint to another backing.
Bindo Altoviti's portrait, Doña Isabel de Requesens and other works have complex structural histories. Their catalogue medium may require qualification.
An image can remain recognisable while the object behind its surface changes radically.
Altarpieces divided and reframed
Predellas were detached, main panels cut down and frames replaced. These changes alter scale, sequence and viewing.
Reconstruction through documents and surviving fragments can recover relationships without pretending the original chapel is present in a museum.
Raphael's painting practice included collaboration with carpenters, gilders and patrons. Frame and site were not afterthoughts.
Copies and Raphael's fame
Raphael's paintings were copied early and abundantly. Copies spread composition, met devotional demand and sometimes preserve details altered or lost in originals.
They also create attribution traps. A later replica may inherit a famous title and provenance story until technical evidence separates it.
Copying is both testimony to influence and an independent history of objects.
Prints and painted invention
Marcantonio Raimondi's engravings carried Raphael's designs far beyond single paintings. Some compositions were conceived specifically for print rather than copied from a finished panel.
This matters to a paintings hub because it prevents every Raphael image from being called a painting. Design moved across media.
His fame depended on that mobility, but medium determines how an image was made and encountered.
Tapestry cartoons are not paintings in the ordinary sense
The full-size cartoons for the Sistine Chapel tapestries are painted works on paper, created as production designs for weaving. Their reversed compositions, colour instructions and seams belong to translation into textile.
They may be discussed beside Raphael's colour and figure invention, yet they are not portable oil panels or frescoes.
Keeping categories clear makes his versatility more visible, not less.
Sacred narrative and human relation
Raphael's religious paintings endure because doctrine is carried through bodily relation. The Virgin supports, Christ reaches, saints look, donors witness and crowds respond.
Symbols remain important, but they are embedded in action. A goldfinch, book, cross or cloud acquires force through who touches or sees it.
This is why his calm can contain grief. Harmony organises foreknowledge rather than cancelling it.
Mythological painting
At the Villa Farnesina, ancient fable entered a modern pleasure villa through fresco, architecture and garden illusion. Galatea and the Cupid and Psyche cycle differ in date, hand and programme.
Myth allowed sensuous bodies and inventive movement while also serving marriage, patronal identity and learned display.
Calling the figures merely decorative misses how carefully narrative and setting interact.
The painted portrait as social object
Raphael's sitters include merchants, women of court, friends, cardinals and popes. The variety defeats a single formula.
Hands may hold books, cloth, apples or nothing. Backgrounds can be landscape, chamber or flat colour. Office may dominate or recede behind intimacy.
Portrait painting became one of the places where Raphael tested how public identity could remain human.
Why grace is not the opposite of effort
Raphael's contemporaries and later admirers praised grace: a quality of appropriateness, beauty and apparent ease.
Technical research shows that ease depended on work. Pounced dots, altered heads, revised backgrounds, layered glazes and geometrical axes are not failures of spontaneity.
They are the structure that allows complexity to arrive without strain.
How to look at a Raphael painting
Begin with the object label: support, dimensions, date, attribution and current collection. Ask whether it was made for chapel, room, house or circulation.
Then follow relations. Which gaze leads elsewhere? Which hand closes a triangle? Where does architecture change scale? What does colour separate or join?
Finally, remember condition. A dark passage may have lost glaze; a background may be later; a canvas may once have been wood.
Artist Up Close
Raphael's distinctive power does not reside in one face type or colour. It lies in his ability to coordinate stages that could easily come apart. Drawing remains alive after transfer; geometry supports tenderness; costly pigment serves hierarchy; assistants extend a conception without making authorship simple.
Scientific study brings us closer to this intelligence because it restores sequence. We see the landscape before architecture, the pricked knot later omitted, the red glaze above opaque paint and the underdrawing adjusted at the final surface.
The finished image still appears whole. Now its wholeness can be understood as an achievement rather than a miracle without labour.
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References
- National Gallery, London, “Raphael's Early Work in the National Gallery: Paintings before Rome,” Technical Bulletin 25 View source.
- National Gallery, London, “Studying Raphael: Pigments and Medium,” View source.
- National Gallery, London, “Studying Raphael: Drawings and Cartoons,” View source.
- National Gallery, London, “The Garvagh Madonna,” collection and technical catalogue record View source.
- Museo Nacional del Prado, “Late Raphael,” exhibition research, 2012 View source.
- Vatican Museums, “Raphael's Rooms,” View source.
- Villa Farnesina, “The Loggia of Cupid and Psyche,” Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei View source.
- National Gallery, London, “How to Spot a Raphael,” View source.