Raphael (9)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pope_Julius_II.jpg

It’s interesting to me that Vasari spends most of his time talking about what a good person Raphael was, rather than the type of artist he was. Raphael was a great artist who constantly looked up to his master Pietro and Michelangelo and their style of painting. Although Raphael’s work is incomparable to Michelangelo. Raphael had a hard time making his paintings look realistic and lifelike. He realized that if he didn’t take the time to practice and study he would never reach that point of perfection. He began to improve his style by studying nudes, human anatomy. I remember when I was taking my figure drawing class; we spent a lot of time studying the human body. We even went as far as going to see a cadaver and we were to touch and feel the muscles in order to truly understand the body and its proportions. So this is exactly what Raphael had to do. One of his famous pieces was the one of Pope Julius. Vasari states in the Lives “… he painted a portrait in oil of Pope Julius during this time, which was so lifelike and real that it made the onlooker shrink from it in fear, as if the pope were truly alive.” Although to everyone else Raphael reached his goal as to making his paintings look lifelike, he was still not satisfied with himself and continued studying and improving his technique. Something every artist struggles with is not trying to impress others, but to reach a point of perfection that only he or she has in their mind.