Raphael
This first of the famous "Stanze" or "Raphael Rooms" to be painted, now known as the "Stanza della Segnatura" after its use in Vasari's time, was to make a stunning impact on Roman art, and remains generally regarded as his greatest masterpiece, containing "The School of Athens", "The Parnassus" and the "Disputa". Raphael was then given further rooms to paint, displacing other artists including Perugino and Signorelli. He completed a sequence of three rooms, each with paintings on each wall and often the ceilings too, increasingly leaving the work of painting from his detailed drawings to the large and skilled workshop team he had acquired, who added a fourth room, probably only including some elements designed by Raphael, after his early death in 1520. The death of Julius in 1513 did not interrupt the work at all, as he was succeeded by Raphael's last Pope, the Medici Pope Leo X, with whom Raphael formed an even closer relationship, and who continued to commission him. Raphael's friend Cardinal Bibbiena was also one of Leo's old tutors, and a close friend and advisor.
Creation of the World (Raphael)
Creation of the World is a mosaic composition in the dome of the Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, designed by Raphael. The chapel itself was designed by Raphael for his friend and patron, banker Agostino Chigi as a private chapel and family burial place. The dome was decorated with mosaics, a somewhat unusual and old-fashioned technique in the 16th century. Raphael's cartoons were executed by a Venetian craftsman, Luigi da Pace in 1516. The original cartoons were lost but some preparatory drawings, that confirm the originality of the work, survived in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. There are two studies for the figure of God and one for the angel above Jupiter. Another drawing in the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille shows the planet Mars with an angel. This is probably a creative drawing by a pupil suggested by its inferior quality. Luigi da Pace signed and dated the work at the corner of the panel of Venus: