The artist, a child prodigy and part of a trinity of Renaissance greats along with Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, died in 1520, aged only 37.
A red rose graces his tomb in Rome’s Pantheon all year round.
His body was exhumed in the 19th century, at which point a plaster cast of his skull was made.
But experts were unsure whether the remains really belonged to Raphael, because the excavation also unearthed other full and partial skeletons.
Several of the skeletons belonged to the artist’s students, but others were unidentified.
As Rome marked 500 years since his death this year, the team from Tor Vergata University began making a 3D reconstruction of the plaster cast.
It found a clear match with the Raphael pictured in portraits by other artists in the period, as well as the artist’s self-portraits.
A 3D-reconstruction only captures 80 per cent of the original face, but the team said there’s no doubt about the result.
“This research provides, for the first time, concrete proof that skeleton exhumed in the Pantheon in 1833 belongs to Raphael,” molecular anthropologist, Olga Rickards, said.
Despite his premature death 500 years ago, Raphael produced a vast oeuvre of seminal work, much of it at the Vatican, whose opulent museums include several rooms filled with his frescoes.
Completed by Raphael’s students after his death, they remain some of the Vatican’s most popular rooms.
