Raphael was born Raffaello Sanzio or Raffaello Santiin Urbino on April 6, 1483. Raphael was the son of Giovanni Sanzio and Magia di Battista Ciarla; his mother died in 1491. His father was, according to the 16th century artist and biographer Giorgia Vasari, a painter "of no great merit."" He was, however a man of culture, who was in constant contact with the advanced artistic ideas current at the court of Urbino. (Santi, page 2) He gave his son his first instruction in painting, and, before his death in 1494, when Raphael was 11, he had introduced the Raphael to humanistic philosophy at the court. His father, Giovanni Santi, held an important but indefinite post at the court of Urbino. He was the artistic factotum of Duke Frederick, one of the most intellectual princes and most enlightened art lovers of his age. Raphael, an Italian Renaissance painter, is considered one of the greatest and most popular artists of all time.
Apprenticeship at Perugia.
In 1499, he went to Perugia, in Umbria, and became a student and assistant of the painter Perugino. Raphael imitated his master closely; the paintings of this period were executed in styles so similar that art historians found it difficult to determine which were painted by Raphael. Among his independent works executed at Perugia are two large scale paintings, the Sposalizio, or Marriage of the Virgin (1504, Brera Gallery, Milan), and The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, Saints and Angels (1503, National Gallery, London).
Florentine Period.
In 1504, Raphael move to Florence, where he studied the work of such established painter of the time as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Fra Bartolommeo, learning their methods of representing the play of light and shade, anatomy, and dramatic action. At this time he made a transition form the typical style of the Umbrian school, with its emphasis on perspective and rigidly geometrical composition, to a more animated, informal manner of painting.