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.
Adoration of the Shepherds (Raphael)
Raphael's "Adoration of Shepherds" diverges from the traditional presentation of this scene, with shepherds in silent adoration of the infant Jesus, by putting almost all of the shepherds in some sort of active discourse. They talk with each other, and Joseph takes an active role in directing them. As Passavant wrote after studying the 13 arcades in the Vatican loggias, which Raphael and his artists made in 1519, “This is perhaps the only design in which Joseph is in action, he is generally merely a passive spectator.” Raphael's 1508 drawing of "Adoration of the Shepherds" would predate the loggias, painted in 1519, and may have inspired the more active portrayal of Joseph.