The second in a two-part study of Raphael, this film opens with the artist's arrival in Rome at the age of 25 to work in the Vatican for Pope Julius II. The film follows Raphael's career as papal protegé and conjures up the ambience of aristocratic high culture in which he moved. It explores the influence on Raphael's work of the architect Donato Bramante, the humanist thinkers Baldassare Castiglione and Pietro Bembo, and his great contemporary Michelangelo, who worked for Pope Julius from 1508 to 1512 on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Raphael's stylistic development is traced from the celebrated School of Athens, through to the Cupid and Psyche and Galatea frescos in the Villa Farnesina, to his powerful tapestry designs for the Sistine Chapel and the Transfiguration altarpiece on which he was working at the time of his death. In particular, the film examines the evolution of some of Raphael's best-known images, and the influence of the Classical art of ancient Rome. While Raphael's mature art thus takes its place in a wide historical perspective, this film also focuses on key sites in Rome and its environs.