Raphael Quotes

Famous Quotes by Raphael

When one is painting one does not think

Famous Quotes on Raphael

Probably no other pupil of genius has ever absorbed so much of his master's teaching as Raphael did

Heinrich Wölfflin

The bearer of this will be found to be Raphael, painter of Urbino, who, being greatly gifted in his profession has determined to spend some time in Florence to study. And because his father was most worthy and I was very attached to him, and the son is a sensible and well-mannered young man, on both accounts, I bear him great love

The mother of the next Duke of Urbino to the Gonfaloniere of Florence, in a letter of recommendation

Raphael gives his [figures] a superhuman clarity and grace in a universe of Euclidian certainties

Michael Levey

This is how Raphael himself, who was so rich in inventiveness, used to work, always coming up with four or six ways to show a narrative, each one different from the rest, and all of them full of grace and well done.

Anonymous writer, regarding his drawings

Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die.

Pietro Bembo, placed on the inscription in Raphael's marble sarcophagus

With Raphael's death, classic art – the High Renaissance – subsided

Walter Friedländer, regarding the rise of Mannerism

The excellency of this extraordinary man lay in the propriety, beauty, and majesty of his characters, his judicious contrivance of his composition, correctness of drawing, purity of taste, and the skilful accommodation of other men’s conceptions to his own purpose. Nobody excelled him in that judgment, with which he united to his own observations on nature the energy of Michael Angelo, and the beauty and simplicity of the antique. To the question, therefore, which ought to hold the first rank, Raffaelle or Michael Angelo, it must be answered, that if it is to be given to him who possessed a greater combination of the higher qualities of the art than any other man, there is no doubt but Raffaelle is the first. But if, according to Longinus, the sublime, being the highest excellence that human composition can attain to, abundantly compensates the absence of every other beauty, and atones for all other deficiencies, then Michael Angelo demands the preference.

Sir Joshua Reynolds

The medieval principles led up to Raphael, and the modern principles lead down from him.

John Ruskin