Raffaello Sanzio is one of the most important artists of the Renaissance period. Born in Urbino, in the Marche region, in 1483, he was painter and architect and he was among the most requested and famous ones of his time. He came to Rome in 1508, at the age of just 25, the same year when Michelangelo started painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. As first commission he had to paint the private rooms of the pope Julius II in the Vatican. Since then his activity in Rome never stopped and he realised plenty of masterpieces. He died very young at the age of 37, allegedly, according to Vasari, because of "love excesses". He was buried in the Pantheon and his shrine reports a very nice sentence in latin: "Ille hic est Raphael timuit quo sospite vinci rerum magna parens et moriente mori" : here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die.
