Raphael
Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. The best known work is "The School of Athens" in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking.
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: