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Raphael: Florence
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After a short visit in the summer at Urbino, Raphael went to live at Florence towards the end of 1504. The four years he spent there were a new and decisive stage in his career. At that date Florence was the most intense and active centre of the Renaissance (and the period was pregnant with artistic development). Leonardo da Vinci and the young Michelangelo, the two leaders of the movement, revealed (1506) in their rival "cartoons" (now lost) of the Signory perfect models of historical composition. In the stimulating atmosphere of a perpetual contest dominated by an impassioned love of beauty and fame Raphael found fresh incentive. The knowledge and skill of the least of the Florentine painters were calculated to amaze the young provincial and sharpen his ideas, which proved most profitable to his talent.
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Before Raphael left Perugia, Madonna Atalanta Baglioni begged him to do a panel for her chapel in the church of S. Francesco. But not being able to do so then, he promised that he would not fail her when he returned from Florence, vhere he had affairs. At Florence he devoted infinite pains to the study of his art, and did the cartoon for this chapel, intending to carry it out as soon as he had the opportunity, as he did. Agnolo Doni was then in Florence, and though sparing in other things, spent willingly upon paintings and sculpture, of which he was very fond, though he saved as much as he could. He had portraits of himself and his wife done, 13 which may be seen in the house of his son Gio. Battista, built by Agnolo, a fine structure and most convenient in the Corso de' Tintori, near the corner of the Alberti in Florence.
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Raphael's mother supposedly cared for her infant son herself rather than sending him out to a wet nurse, and the close relationship with his parents was invoked by contemporaries as the reason for his sweet disposition. Sweet he may have been, but he was ... talented to an extraordinary extent, with ambitions to match. He learned the elements of painting from his father and the local painter Timoteo Viti, but was soon apprenticed in Florence to Italy's most successful painter of the time, Pietro di Vannucci, nicknamed Perugino (c. 1450รข€“1523), "the man from Perugia."
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