Rafael painting raffaello

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael.

From the museum label: Flaubert dismissed La Fornarina in a few words: "She was a beautiful woman, that's all you need to know." Opinions of beauty often differ, of course, but historians have done their best to discover as much as they can about the elusive identity of this model who posed for Raphael, "a very amorous person, delighting much in women", or so Vasari tells us, and in particular in "a mistress" whom he is reputed to have portrayed. Yet we still do not know a great deal about…

Portrait-of-a-Young-Girl-Raphael - Category:Portrait of a Young Woman (Raphael and Giulio Romano) - Wikimedia Commons

St. Luke Painting the Virgin - Raffael (eigntl. Rafaello Santi)

The Parnassus (Raphael).

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Private life of Raphael secret love ...