The world expects us to be Raphaels, but some of us are Leonardos. Don’t hold your Leonardo mind to Raphael standards, because this Raphael world would be nothing without Leonardo minds. There’s an inscription in the Pantheon in Rome that says, “Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived.” In other words, Raphael was such an amazing painter, Nature was supposedly shaking in her boots, afraid he would learn all her tricks. (Ironically, Raphael’s remains are sealed away in a sarcophagus, where Nature can’t get to them. Who’s afraid of who?) But Nature had nothing to fear. Raphael could not outdo her. As Raphael was being buried, the painter Nature should have feared lay hundreds of miles to the north, in a little church on the grounds of the King of France’s chateau. Raphael the young phenom, Leonardo, the old has-been Several years before Raphael’s early death, he was getting paid thousands of ducats to paint one fresco after another in the Vatican. Meanwhile, the aging Leonardo da Vinci was nearby, living off a meager 33 ducat-a-month stipend, not doing much of importance. The pope had tried hiring him to paint something, but ended up frustrated, saying, “This man will never get anything done!” When the prolific art patron, Elizabeth d’Este, who had hounded Leonardo for a portrait for decades, came to visit Rome, she didn’t bother getting in touch with Leonardo. He was a has-been, who couldn’t be counted on to follow through. Who was she there to see? The young phenom, Raphael. Raphael was very similar to Leonardo, but also very different. His most important difference was that he was a master executor. If you hired Raphael, he got the job done. He also had been raised in the workshop of his father, a court painter for a Duke, so Raphael was refined and well-mannered. He knew how to schmooze with nobility. He had the connections that came along with that background, and could get a letter of recommendation from one powerful person to another with ease. Leonardo, on the other hand, was born out of wedlock – which made him “illegitimate” at the time – and didn’t get much education. While he had gained a reputation as a brilliant engineer and architect, he had also gained a reputation as an unreliable painter. Raphael: A reliable Leonardo As Raphael continued his career as the pope’s wunderkind, Leonardo worked his way north. He left yet another project unfinished in Milan, then impressed King Francis I enough to be invited to join him at the Chateau d’Amboise, as the official painter, architect, and court pageantry designer. While a gig with the King of France wasn’t the worst thing in the world, it was a step down from what Leonardo could have been doing if he hadn’t been reputed as someone who couldn’t get things done. The pope and all the nobles in all the principalities of Italy just watched him go. He’d never return again. While Raphael had some clear advantages that helped his career advance, he couldn’t have done it without the ways he and Leonardo were similar. The frescoes being painted by the young Raphael – such as his most-famous School of Athens – were exactly the kinds of projects Leonardo would have been great for, if only he could have been counted on to finish them. In fact, there was no person in the world to whom Raphael owed his own painting style more than Leonardo. When it came to painting, Raphael was mostly a reliable Leonardo. Raphael’s “Leonardo period” Art historians call the years during which Raphael spent a lot of time in Florence his “Florence period.” But they might as well call them his “Leonardo period.” That’s the four years during which Raphael’s work started looking less like that of his mentor, Perugino, and more like that of his idol, Leonardo. During Raphael’s Florence period, Leonardo was in a public face-off with another young phenom, Michelangelo. Leonardo had been commissioned to paint a battle scene in the Florence Council Hall. As usual, the fi