 Raphael worked on this painting while he was still an apprentice. Historians believe he was merely completing a job for a client while his master was out of town, although many have marvelled at Raphael’s superior architectural renderings and realistic foreground figures. The artist’s signature - inscribed into the cornice of the temple, etched on either side of the painting’s central axis - has been described as one of the most conspicuous and audacious in Italian art, an assertion by the artist that he believed his own work to be unmatched. |