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.
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.