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| Raphael Heads of Two Apostles ca. 1503 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| attributed to Raphael Battle of Nude Men ca. 1503 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Raphael Leda and the Swan ca. 1507 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Raphael Allegorical Figure of Poetry ca. 1509-1510 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
"Born in 1483, Raphael was eight years younger than Michelangelo, and his difference in age from Leonardo measured three decades. Of the three great innovative geniuses of the High Renaissance style in Central Italy, Raphael carried the least accumulation of Quattrocento baggage with him into the new century; he was seventeen when it arrived. He was the son of a modest painter of Urbino, Giovanni Santi, who died when Raphael was eleven, but nevertheless gave him the first rudiments of art. According to Vasari, the young Raphael received his more substantial education under Perugino in Perugia, and this is likely to have been in the years following close after Giovanni Santi's death. In December 1500 the first document we possess for Raphael, a contract for an altarpiece (of which only fragments remain) for Città di Castello, identifies him as magister, an independent painter. He had assimilated Perugino's teaching to the point where, as Vasari saw it, Raphael's beginning mode and Perugino's could not be distinguished. The relation is in fact unusually close, but even the first works by Raphael reveal, beneath the resemblance to Perugino, a basically distinct idea of style. Raphael's entire artistic background, not just his training under Perugino, had been in the strongest continuing tradition of classicism in the fifteenth century, of which Piero della Francesca had been the mediator. In Perugino's hands the austere early classicism of Piero had become a style of détente, seeking easier naturalness and harmony in quiet, which too often verged upon inertia. Raphael's first identifiable instinct was to instill this style with a new aliveness . . . "
– S.J. Freedberg from Painting in Italy - 1500 to 1600 in the Pelican History of Art series (London, 1971)
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| Raphael Studies of Heads for Parnassus fresco ca. 1509-10 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Raphael Study for Disputà fresco (left half) ca. 1509 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Raphael Hercules (recto of sheet) battling the Hydra ca. 1508 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Raphael Hercules (verso of sheet) battling the Nemean Lion ca. 1508 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Raphael Study for Massacre of the Innocents ca. 1510 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Raphael Figure staggering ca. 1512 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Raphael Figures crouching ca. 1513-14 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Raphael Study for Madonna dell' Impannata ca. 1512 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Raphael Study for Christ's Charge to Peter ca. 1514 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Raphael The Three Graces ca. 1517-18 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |