Thanks to Donato Bramante,
who had introduced him to the papal court,
he had come to Rome in 1508, when he was twenty-five years old and was already an established painter.

Pope Julius II, for the decoration of his apartment (the Stanze),
after testing Perugino, Baldassarre Peruzzi,
Lorenzo Lotto, Sodoma,
having seen the vault of the Stanza della Segnatura
frescoed by Raphael, fired everyone
and entrusted the decoration of his apartment to Raffaello alone.