Raphael
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49 free Raphael trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Raphael died at 37 on Good Friday, possibly his birthday, and was buried in the Pantheon at his own request. In a dozen Roman years he frescoed the pope's library, designed the Sistine tapestries, took over St Peter's from Bramante, ran a workshop of fifty, and kept a baker's daughter as his constant companion. These 49 questions cover the life and the work: Urbino and the court painter father, the Perugino apprenticeship, the Florentine years under Leonardo's spell, and the summons from Julius II. You will get The School of Athens in detail (Plato's book, Michelangelo's varicose veins, the self-portrait beside Ptolemy), the Sistine Madonna's journey to Dresden and Moscow, the Transfiguration contest with Sebastiano del Piombo, the Raphael Cartoons in London, La Fornarina's armband, and Michelangelo's bitter claim that everything Raphael knew he got from him. Easy questions cover the trinity and the Pantheon; the hard tier asks about obelisks, Città di Castello and the Latin tondo above the fresco. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which small Italian city was Raphael born in 1483?
Urbino
Urbino. He carried the town in his name for life, signing paintings and documents 'Raphael Urbinas', Latin for Raphael of Urbino.
Q 02Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo are the three great masters of which period of Italian art?
High Renaissance
High Renaissance. Raphael was the youngest of the three by far, and at 21 he went to Florence to study what the other two were doing there.
Q 03The Vatican room holding The School of Athens is thought to have been planned as a pope's private what?
Library
Library. Each wall stands for a branch of learning its books covered: philosophy faces theology, with poetry and law on the two side walls.
Q 04Raphael died at 37 on which holy day?
Good Friday
Good Friday. Vasari wrote that he was born on a Good Friday too, and blamed the fatal fever on a night of amorous excess that Raphael hid from his doctors.
Q 05Which pope invited Raphael to Rome in 1508?
Julius II
Julius II. He no longer wanted to live in the rooms of his detested predecessor, Alexander VI, so he had the floor above redecorated and Raphael got the job.
Q 06Under which Umbrian master did Raphael most probably train?
Pietro Perugino
Pietro Perugino. Raphael absorbed his style so fully that, Vasari wrote, nobody would believe one early altarpiece was the pupil's if he hadn't signed it.
Q 07Which two philosophers stand at the centre of The School of Athens?
Plato and Aristotle
Plato and Aristotle. Plato points up to the heavens while Aristotle holds his hand out over the ground, usually read as ideals against the world we can see.
Q 08Which artist is believed to be portrayed as Plato in The School of Athens?
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci. Plato's long-bearded face so resembles a red-chalk drawing in Turin that the likeness helped get that drawing labelled Leonardo's self-portrait.
Q 09As which philosopher did Raphael paint Michelangelo in The School of Athens?
Heraclitus
Heraclitus. The sulking loner was a last-minute addition: Raphael cut into the finished wall, laid fresh plaster and painted him in.
Q 10Raphael painted himself into The School of Athens beside which ancient Greek astronomer and geographer?
Ptolemy
Ptolemy. The young face in a black cap looking out beside him is the one portrait of Raphael everyone accepts, because Vasari vouched for it.
Q 11Raphael's workshop took its 'grotesque' wall ornament from the buried palace of which Roman emperor?
Nero
Nero. His Golden House lay underground by then, its painted rooms entered like caves, or 'grotte', which is the likely origin of the word grotesque.
Q 12Which Raphael fresco in the Vatican is a night scene lit by a glowing angel?
The Liberation of Saint Peter
The Liberation of Saint Peter. Raphael set three kinds of light against each other, moonlight, a guard's torch and the angel's glow, and let the angel's outshine the rest.
Q 13Which fresco on the opposite wall from The School of Athens represents theology?
La Disputa
Q 21Which rival painted The Raising of Lazarus in competition with Raphael's last altarpiece?
Sebastiano del Piombo
Sebastiano del Piombo. Michelangelo slipped him drawings for the main figures to help him outdo Raphael, and it was his picture, not Raphael's, that went to France.
Q 22Which London institution has displayed the Raphael Cartoons on loan since 1865?
Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum. They still belong to the Crown: the future Charles I bought them in 1623 to weave copies from, and Queen Victoria lent them in 1865.
Q 23Raphael's Cartoons show the lives of Saint Paul and which other saint?
Peter
La Disputa. The two frescoes face each other on purpose, setting Christian faith opposite Greek philosophy as partners rather than rivals.
Q 14In which German city does the Sistine Madonna hang?
Dresden
Dresden. Augustus III, elector of Saxony and king of Poland, bought it in 1754 from the monastery church it was painted for and brought it north.
Q 15Which detail of the Sistine Madonna became famous in its own right as a popular image?
The two cherubs
The two cherubs. Leaning on the ledge and gazing upward, they have been lifted out of the painting onto T-shirts, socks, stamps and gift-shop mugs.
Q 16In 1931 the Soviet government secretly sold Raphael's Alba Madonna from the Hermitage to which American financier?
Andrew Mellon
Andrew Mellon. He bought it through a chain of dealers in Berlin, London and New York, then gave it to the nation in the founding gift of the National Gallery of Art.
Q 17Where was the Sistine Madonna kept for a decade after World War II?
Moscow
Moscow. Soviet troops took it there in 1945, and it was handed back to East Germany in 1955, after Stalin's death, as a gesture of friendship.
Q 18In Raphael's Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia, what lies scattered at the saint's feet as she listens to angels sing?
Musical instruments
Musical instruments. The patron saint of musicians ignores them to listen to the choir overhead, and Vasari wrote that they looked 'not painted, but real'.
Q 19What was Raphael's last painting, unfinished at his death?
The Transfiguration
The Transfiguration. It was set up at the head of his bier as he lay in state in his studio, and it was never sent to the French cathedral it was painted for.
Q 20Which cardinal commissioned Raphael's last altarpiece for his cathedral at Narbonne in France?
Giulio de' Medici
Giulio de' Medici. The future Pope Clement VII ordered a second altarpiece for the same cathedral from a rival, sent that one to France and kept Raphael's in Rome.
Peter. Seven of the ten designs survive: they were cut into long strips, and the strips were only put back together in the 1690s at Hampton Court.
Q 24In which city were the Sistine tapestries woven from Raphael's cartoons?
Brussels
Brussels. A tapestry came off the loom as a mirror image of its design, so Raphael had to plan every scene back to front.
Q 25Who kept the Raphael Cartoons for the state when the rest of Charles I's art collection was sold off?
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell. They were among the few royal treasures he held back from the sale after the king's execution, and the Crown recovered them at the Restoration.
Q 26By tradition, who was 'La Fornarina', Raphael's long-term lover in Rome?
Margherita Luti
Margherita Luti. The nickname means the baker's daughter, after her father's trade, and on his deathbed Raphael left her enough money to live on.
Q 27Raphael is known by one name, but which surname do Italians give him?
Sanzio
Sanzio. It comes from a Latinised form of Santi, the plain surname of his father Giovanni, and Italians still call him Raffaello Sanzio.
Q 28Which Rome palace houses La Fornarina?
Palazzo Barberini
Palazzo Barberini. A ring on her left hand was painted over after Raphael died, and its rediscovery set off talk that the two had secretly married.
Q 29To whose niece was Raphael reluctantly engaged from 1514?
Cardinal Bibbiena
Cardinal Bibbiena. Raphael kept putting the wedding off, and Vasari gives a reason: he had been led to hope for a cardinal's red hat, which a wife would rule out.
Q 30Where was Raphael buried at his own request?
The Pantheon
The Pantheon. In his will he paid to restore one of its ancient shrines as his own tomb and to set a marble Madonna above it.