RAFFAELLO Sanzio
(b. 1483, Urbino, d. 1520, Roma)

Interior view

begun 1518
Photo
Villa Madama, Rome

Raphael's greatest work as an architect was the villa he began on the Monte Mario just outside Rome for Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, now known as the Villa Madama. The plan reveals that Raphael was no mere paper architect: he enjoyed solving practical planning problems, making ingenious accommodations both to the site and to the user's needs - for air, cool, quiet, privacy, views, defence, advertisement.

In the interior, it is the great tripartite loggia, which was vaulted and decorated soon after his death by his workshop, that most impresses; there is no more magnificent room built in the Renaissance. Yet, for all its grandeur, the loggia is convivial in feeling and social in character, perhaps because of the small scale and playful nature of its crisp stucco ornament: the pilasters articulate the wall but are part of its low-relief pattern so that the surfaces flow unbroken from space to space, from walls into domes and semi-domes and apses.

The photo shows the interior of the tripartite loggia, the space looking to the garden.