Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, also Raffael da Urbino, Raffaello Santi, Raffaello Sanzio or Raphael for short (* 6 April or 28 March 1483 in Urbino; † 6 April 1520 in Rome) was an Italian painter and architect. He is considered one of the most important artists of the Italian High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, its simple composition and its visual realisation of the Neoplatonic ideal of human greatness. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of the great masters of the period.
Raffael was enormously productive, ran an unusually large workshop and left behind a large body of work despite his early death at the age of 37. Many of his works are in the Vatican Palace, where the Raphael Rooms of frescoes are the central and largest work of his career. The most famous 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 during his lifetime, although his work was known outside Rome mainly from his collaborative printmaking.