Paintings in Rome (1510-20)
by RAFFAELLO
Raphael did not rest on the laurels he had won from his work on the Stanza della Segnatura. On the contrary, he remained just as willing to learn, took up new subjects, and developed old ones further. Nevertheless, he retained his clear symmetrical layout, which had been so successful, as a compositional principle. Although his main task in Rome was to decorate the Stanze, he still found time for a subject that had preoccupied him for a long time: the Madonna and Christ Child. Numerous portraits were also executed in this period.
In the last years of his short life, Raphael had passed from the highly synthetic and expressive compositions of the first years of the 1510s to representations which were more and more complex and even more dispersive. Most of these were finished by his pupils, for this was the busiest moment in Raphael's career.
