Raphael (1483–1520) is considered the most important artist of the Italian High Renaissance alongside Michelangelo and Leonardo. In his short lifetime he created around one hundred paintings and numerous frescoes, including nine fresco cycles, on an unsurpassed variety of themes – from sensual female beauties, antique myths and portraits of wealthy Romans and church dignitaries to history cycles and biblical scenes. He produced altarpieces, as well as designing tapestries for the Sistine Chapel and directing the construction of St Peter’s Basilica. His Sistine Madonna is one of the most frequently reproduced religious paintings of all time.
Raphael was a tireless learner, for whom there could be no standing still, no repetition of tried and tested solutions, but only the constant forward thrust of an inexhaustible imagination. He transformed his central theme, the visionary experience of divine grace, into visible pictorial reality. It was his mature work in Rome, and above all the frescoes in the Vatican Palace, that secured him his place in art history. Admired even during his own lifetime as the most modern artist of his day, Raphael’s mastery would pave the way for Mannerism and the Baroque era.
This XXL edition is the most comprehensive work published on Raphael. The volume encompasses in total 112 paintings and all the frescoes, architectural projects and tapestries in many new photographs and numerous details, as well as the most extensive catalogue raisonné of the artist’s oeuvre. A team of Raphael experts introduces the reader also to the fascinating interplay of art and power in the High Renaissance.
Frank Zöllner wrote his doctoral thesis on motifs originating from Antiquity in the history of art and architecture of the Medieval and Renaissance periods (1987). He is also the author of a postdoctoral treatise on motion and expression in the art of Leonardo da Vinci, published in 2010. He has published numerous works on Renaissance art and art theory, and on 20th-century art. Since 1996 he has been Professor of Medieval and Modern Art at the University of Leipzig. For TASCHEN he has authored the XL monographs on Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Georg Satzinger, Professor of Art History at the University of Bonn since 1997, wrote his doctoral thesis on the pilgrimage church of Madonna di San Biagio near Montepulciano, an important central-plan building of the High Renaissance. He qualified as a university lecturer with a thesis on Michelangelo’s projects for the façade of San Lorenzo in Florence. He has authored numerous publications on 15th- and 16th-century Italian architecture and sculpture, on the history of Michelangelo’s influence, as well as on Albrecht Dürer and Balthasar Neumann, among others.
Michael Rohlmann gained his doctorate with a thesis on the import of Early Netherlandish painting into Early Renaissance Florence. He qualified as a university lecturer with a thesis on the pictorial decoration of the Sistine Chapel. He is the author of numerous publications on Italian and French painting of the early modern period. He teaches art history at the University of Cologne and the University of Wuppertal.
Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen has been studying the work of Raphael since his master’s degree. He compiled the scholarly catalogue of the holdings of early Tuscan and Umbrian paintings at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt and has also published numerous essays on Italian and German art. Since 2002 he has been head of the art collection of the University of Leipzig and since 2012 Associate Professor of Art History.
