Raphael was born in Urbino, a hill town in the Marche region of central Italy, in 1483. His father, the court painter Giovanni Santi, had bought the family house there in 1460, and it still stands.
Urbino was small, but the Montefeltro dukes kept a lively circle of artists around them, and Santi worked inside it as a painter and a poet. Raphael grew up in his father's workshop, with the palace close by.
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The town is certain. The day is not.
Raphael died on Good Friday 1520. The painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote that he was born on a Good Friday too, at three o'clock at night. In 1483, Good Friday fell on 28 March. The date printed in most biographies is 6 April, the day he died.
Both cannot be true. The confusion starts with a line of Latin on his tomb, which can be read as saying that he died on his own birthday. Readers took it as the calendar date, and 6 April stuck.
What You'll Discover
Which day he was really born.
What the house in Urbino holds.
Who taught him first.
Who raised him after 1494.