Why isn’t Raphael as adored by modern day audiences as Leonardo or Michelangelo?

Why isn’t Raphael as adored by modern day audiences as Leonardo or Michelangelo? While the last two provoke passion and attract throngs—Leonardo for his inventions and human insight, Michelangelo for his heroic nudes and sheer virtuosity—Raphael is more likely to elicit mild curiosity or indifference

Yet he was a painter and architect of tremendous virtuosity and energy, wide-ranging in his talents and capable of absorbing and transforming the latest stylistic innovations. In his early years as an artist in Urbino, where he was born in 1483, his work is almost indistinguishable from his tradition-bound master, Perugino. But as soon as he moved to Florence in 1504 he took on the competitive spirit of the place, and its focus on novelty. In 1508 he moved to Rome to work for Pope Julius II, where the ambition of his patron and his rivalry with Michelangelo pushed him to make some of his best work. Despite his short life—he died in Rome at age 37—he had one of the most productive careers of the Renaissance, and his death was marked by a parade of mourners and burial, at his request, in the Pantheon. MORE