Born in 1483 in Urbino, central Italy, Raphael (Raffaello Santi or Sanzio) was the son of Giovanni Santi, a painter and poet who first trained Raphael. During his childhood, Raphael was exposed to the wide range of artistic activity around the Montefeltro court. After his father died in 1494, Raphael travelled extensively and worked with several masters including the dominant Umbrian painter Pietro Perugino.

Around 1504 Raphael moved to the vibrant artistic center of Florence. Confronted by the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Fra Bartolomeo and other great masters of the 15th century, Raphael began another phase of his artistic education. Many of his paintings were portraits or Madonnas, variations on a theme that allowed him to experiment compositionally without being tied to a single large project. He also continued to travel frequently and in late 1508, moved to Rome to work for Pope Julius II.

Soon after his arrival, Raphael assumed responsibility for the decoration of the Stanza della Segnatura, one of Pope Julius II's private rooms in the Vatican. Raphael's frescoes there and subsequently in the adjacent Stanza d'Eliodoro and dell'Incendio, along with Michelangelo's simultaneous work in the nearby Sistine Chapel, represent a glorious moment in the history of Western art. The number of commissions given to Raphael grew rapidly during the 1510s, and he relied increasingly on teams of assistants to complete these projects. In addition to the stanza, Raphael was responsible for the Chigi chapels in Santa Maria della Pace and Santa Maria del Popolo, the cartoons for the tapestry cycle The Acts of the Apostles for Pope Leo X, frescoes in the logge of the Vatican and of the Villa Farnesina, and many portraits, altarpieces, and designs for engravings.

Raphael died after a short illness on Good Friday in 1520 at age 37, having attained a position of almost complete artistic dominance in Rome. His two principal assistants, Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni, inherited his studio and completed the outstanding contracts that had been awarded during Raphael's lifetime. But the powerful artistic control that Raphael had exerted over his assistants had disappeared and the transformation of his style by a host of different interpreters began.