Raphael

Raphael's frescos for the Vatican apartments were so far superior to the work of other painters that Pope Julius II had all the other works in these rooms destroyed at once in order that Raphael might have the honor of seeing his work preferred above all others. The ideals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty provide the connection for the many frescos; these ideals are given body by means of a "supreme harmony of forms" and a "tonality of colors."

Flip album. Very good quality reproductions of Raphaels drawings and sketches collected by Oskar Fischel. G. Grote Verlag/Berlin, MCMXXIII (1923 - this is the most probably a year of reedition of the piece I have got)

"This companion volume provides a timely reassessment of Raphael, the rare painter who has never gone out of fashion, and addresses the interests of recent scholarship, which has changed the focus from concerns with attribution and definition of the artist's style and the High Renaissance to more practical matters. Essays in this volume examine the intellectual and cultural history of sixteenth-century Rome and Florence that have made it possible to set Raphael in the context of his patrons and his other contemporaries. They demonstrate Raphael's considerable skills as the manager of the largest workshop of his day, one that provided a model for many artists who followed him."--Jacket.