Artist: Raphael | Italy

A young rival of Michelangelo, the renaissance painter Raphael (1483-1520), learned from that master but also sought to mischievously out do him. In his work, “The School of Athens” for the Vatican, he depicts the Greek philosophers, but paints the cynical Heraclitus as Michelangelo. Raphael also paints himself into the work looking on at Heraclitus with a smirk.

Noted works: The School of Athens (1511) and Sistine Madonna (1514)