Raphael

The name attaches most often to a quality rather than a single picture: composition that holds together, where every element sits where it has to sit. Working as a painter — and, according to the record, as an architect and sculptor too — he built a reputation on clarity. His earliest results were not remarkable for inventing anything new; they were remarkable for being clearly put. That preference hardened into a working principle and stayed with him.

He was born in Urbino, in the Duchy of Urbino, on 6 April 1483, and died on the same date in 1520. His training combined close attention to method with a willingness to pull disparate things together, and it ran through apprenticeships and collaborations rather than in isolation. Travel, reading and correspondence supplied the rest. What emerged was a craft ethos: patience with small detail alongside a feel for the larger lines of a structure.

Mid-career brought consolidation and a wider range of problems. Rivals and critics mattered here — the pressure from outside sharpened how he made his case. Some attempts failed, and the failures functioned as tests that improved what came next. Students and colleagues carried the approach outward, past any single workshop or institution, and adapted it for other audiences.

Later on, the concern shifted towards ordering the work and securing what was best in it. Surviving drafts, corrections and experiments sit alongside the finished pieces, which is part of why the archive still repays attention: it shows the contingency as well as the rigour. The papal commissions and the harmonious composition serve as shorthand for his influence, though the more useful part of the inheritance is the method — something reenacted in studios and classrooms rather than simply admired.