The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (393 page)

Raggi , Antonio
.

See
BACICCIO
.

 
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(
c.
1480–1534).
Italian engraver, a pioneer in the use of prints to reproduce the work of other artists. He was born near Bologna, studied there with
Francia
and learned much from
Dürer's
engravings in Venice (Dürer is said to have complained to the Venetian senate about being plagiarized). In about 1510 he settled in Rome, and thereafter worked mainly for
Raphael
, his engravings helping to spread the master's style throughout Europe. Apart from his association with Raphael, Raimondi is best known for his series of erotic engravings (after designs by
Giulio Romano
) that led to his imprisonment in 1524. He left Rome after the Sack of 1527 and died in obscurity in Bologna.

 
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(1935– ).
American painter. Ramos is usually described as a
Pop artist
, but his smooth, impersonal handling (in oils and watercolour) brings him also within the orbit of
Superrealism
. He specializes in paintings of nude women of the calendar pin-up or ‘playmate’ type. Sometimes they are posed with oversized products such as pieces of cheese and sometimes they allude to the work of leading painters of the past (more rarely the present). The jokey quality of his work is reflected in his titles; two typical series are ‘You Get More Spaghetti with Giacometti’ and ‘You Get More Salami with Modigliani’.

 
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(1713–84).
Scottish portrait painter, active mainly in London. He was the outstanding portraitist there from about 1740 to the rise of
Reynolds
in the mid 1750s. Ramsay studied in London, in Rome, and in Naples (under
Solimena
), and when in 1739 he settled in London he brought a cosmopolitan air to British portrait painting. His portraits of women have a decidedly French grace (
The Artist's Wife
, NG, Edinburgh,
c.
1755) and in this field he continued to be a serious rival to Reynolds, who was upset when Ramsay was appointed Painter-in-Ordinary to George III in 1760. Ramsay, however, gradually gave up painting during the 1760s to devote himself to his other interests. He was the son of Allan Ramsay the poet, and inherited his father's literary bent. Political pamphleteering, classical archaeology (he revisited Rome in 1754–7), and conversation took up much of his later years. He was successful in literary circles and Dr Samuel Johnson said of him: ‘You will not find a man in whose conversation there is more instruction, more information, and more elegance.’

 
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Ranson , Paul
.

See
ACADÉMIE
.

 
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(1483–1520).
Italian painter, architect, and designer, the artist in whose works the ideals of the High
Renaissance
find their most complete expression. He was born in Urbino, where in the court of Federico da
Montefeltro
Italian culture had one of its most distinguished settings, and his father, Giovanni
Santi
, was a writer as well as a painter, who would have introduced his son to humanist ideas.
Vasari
says that ‘Raphael came to be of great help to his father in the numerous works that Giovanni executed in the state of Urbino’, but Santi died in 1494, when Raphael was only 11, and the overwhelming influence on his early work was
Perugino
. It is often said that Raphael was Perugino's pupil, but this is probably not strictly true. He was highly precocious and working as an independent artist by 1500; his close contact with Perugino came a little later (
c.
1502–3), when he was probably his colleague rather than assistant. That he soon completely outstripped Perugino is best seen by comparing Raphael's
Marriage of the Virgin
(Brera , Milan 1504) with Perugino's painting of the same subject (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen). The two compositions are closely similar in many ways, but Raphael far surpasses Perugino in lucidity and grace.
In his early career Raphael worked in various places in Tuscany and Umbria. From 1504 to 1508 he worked much in Florence, and this is usually referred to as his Florentine period, although he never took up permanent residence in the city. Under the influence particularly of
Leonardo
and
Michelangelo
his work became grander and more sophisticated. To the Florentine period belong many of his most celebrated depictions of the Virgin and Child. In these and his paintings of the Holy Family he showed his developing mastery of composition and expression. He paints the sacred figures as splendid, healthy human beings, but with a serenity, a sense of some deep inner integrity, that removes any doubt as to the holiness of the subject. This sense of well-being distinguishes the art of Raphael from the more disturbingly intellectual work of Leonardo or the overwhelmingly powerful creations of Michelangelo, and evidently reflects his own balanced nature. Unlike his two great contemporaries, he was not a solitary genius but a sociable and approachable figure, whom Vasari describes as ‘so gentle and so charitable that even animals loved him’. In 1508, though he was only 25 years old, his reputation was sufficiently established for him to be summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II and entrusted with the frescos for one of the papal rooms in the Vatican, the Stanza della Segnatura. He continued to work in Rome till his death in 1520 although he is known to have returned briefly to Florence in 1515.
The Stanza della Segnatura is based on a complex theological programme of the relationship between classical learning and the Christian revelation. On one main wall, in the celebrated painting known as
The School of Athens
, are shown the ancient philosophers, led by Plato and Aristotle, enclosed in a majestic architectural setting, a masterpiece of
perspective
drawing. Opposite, is the painting called the
Disputà
(the Disputation over the Sacrament); the doctors of the church adore the Sacrament, while above the Trinity is surrounded by the saints and martyrs. Here the setting is a wide open space. They are works in which grandeur and gracefulness seem effortlessly combined and they have had a profound and continuing influence on European art. After the completion of the Stanza della Segnatura in 1511 Raphael was entrusted with three other apartments in the Vatican, but by the time he had completed the first of these—the Stanza d'Eliodoro—in 1514, his services were so much in demand that he had to rely increasingly on assistants (of whom
Giulio
Romano was the most distinguished) for the execution of his work. The
cartoons
for tapestries in the Sistine Chapel (Royal Coll., on loan to V&A, London, 1515–16), for example, rank among his noblest designs, but probably comparatively little of the execution is from his own hand. In addition to the tapestries Raphael supervised various other great decorative schemes in Rome: the Villa Farnesina with its ceiling showing the story of Psyche, and a wall fresco,
Galatea
(1511–12), which is from Raphael's own hand at its most expert; the Chigi Chapel in Sta Maria del Popolo (begun
c.
1512), where he designed the entire scheme, comprising architecture, sculpture, painting, mosaic, stuccowork, and marble inlay; and the ceiling and wall arabesques of the Vatican Loggie (
c.
1515 onwards), which left a permanent imprint on European interior decoration. The richness of effect in the Chigi Chapel was an important source for similar works in the
Baroque
era, and it is fitting that the chapel was in fact completed by
Bernini
.
Raphael also painted many portraits and it is in these that the quality of his own workmanship in his later years is best seen. They rival Leonardo in subtlety of characterization and
Titian
in richness of colouring, show great inventiveness in creating psychological situations, and provide a remarkable record of the intellectual circles in which he moved (
Baldassare Castiglione
, Louvre, Paris,
c.
1515). Other important commissions from his Roman period that are largely from his own hand are the
Sistine Madonna
(Gemäldegalerie, Dresden,
c.
1512–14), his most famous painting of the Virgin and Child, and the great altarpiece of the
Transfiguration
(Vatican Gal.), on which he was working at his death, and which presages the
Mannerist
style. From about 1512 he began to work as an architect, and he also embarked on an archaeological survey of ancient Rome, although little evidence of his scheme survives. After the death of
Bramante
in 1514 he became architect to St Peter's, and Raphael ranks second only to him among High Renaissance architects. It is difficult to appreciate his status, however, as little of his work survives as he designed it.
Vasari says that Raphael's early death (on his 37th birthday) ‘plunged into grief the entire papal court’. He was rich, famous, and honoured (Vasari says Pope Leo X, ‘who wept bitterly when he died’, had intended making him a cardinal), and his influence was widely spread even during his own lifetime through the engravings of Marcantonio
Raimondi
. His posthumous reputation was even greater, for until the later 19th cent. he was regarded by almost all critics as the greatest painter who had ever lived—the artist who expressed the basic doctrines of the Christian Church through figures that have a physical beauty worthy of the
antique
.
Reynolds
said: ‘It is from his having taken so many models that he became himself a model for all succeeding painters: always imitating and always original.’ He became the ideal of all
academies
(it was against his authority that the
Pre-Raphaelites
revolted), and today we approach him through a long tradition in which Raphaelesque forms and motifs have been used with a steady diminution of their values. Many lesser artists have imitated him emptily, but he has been a major inspiration to great
classical
painters such as Annibale
Carracci
,
Poussin
, and
Ingres
.