Art Sunday #159: Raphael – Transfiguration

The Transfiguration is the last painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael. Commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de Medici, the later Pope Clement VII (1523–1534) and conceived as an altarpiece for the Narbonne Cathedral in France, Raphael worked on it until his death in 1520. The painting exemplifies Raphael’s development as an artist and the culmination of his career. Unusually for a depiction of the Transfiguration of Jesus in Christian art, the subject is combined with an additional episode from the Gospels in the lower part of the painting.

The Transfiguration stands as an allegory of the transformative nature of representation. It is now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana in Vatican City.

Raphael died on 6 April 1520. At the time of his death, the artist ‘who lived more like a prince than a painter’ lay in state for a couple of days at his house in the Borgo, with the famous Transfiguration, left unfinished at Raphael’s death, at his head.”

Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfiguration_(Raphael)