Work, unceasing work, filled his days. The ingenuity and industry of the man were marvelous. Upwards of eighty portraits were painted during the Roman Period, besides designs innumerable for engravings, and even for silver and iron ornaments required by the Church. Pupils helped him much, of course, and among these must be mentioned Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni. These young men lived with Raphael in his splendid house that stood halfway between Saint Peter's and the Castle Angelo. Fire swept the space a hundred years later, and the magnificence it once knew has never been replaced. Today, hovels built from stone quarried from the ruins mark the spot. But as one follows this white, dusty road, it is well to remember that the feet of Raphael, passing and repassing, have, more than any other one street of Rome, made it sacred soil.
We have seen that Bramante brought Raphael to Rome, and Pope Leo the Tenth remembered this when the first architect of Saint Peter's passed away. Raphael was appointed his successor. The honor was merited, but the place should have gone to one not already overworked. In Fifteen Hundred Fifteen Raphael was made Director of Excavations, another office for which his esthetic and delicate nature was not fitted. In sympathy, of course, his heart went out to the antique workers of the ancient world, on whose ruins the Eternal City is built; but the drudgery of overseeing and superintendence belonged to another type of man.
The stress of the times had told on Raphael; he was thirty-five, rich beyond all Umbrian dreams of avarice, on an equality with the greatest and noblest men of his time, honored above all other living artists. But life began to pall; he had won all—and thereby had learned the worthlessness of what the world has to offer. Dreams of rest, of love and a quiet country home, came to him. He was betrothed to Maria di Bibbiena, a niece of Cardinal Bibbiena. The day of the wedding had been set, and the Pope was to perform the ceremony.
But the Pope regarded Raphael as a servant of the Church: he had work for him to do, and moreover he had fixed ideas concerning the glamour of sentimentalism, so he requested that the wedding be postponed for a space.
A request from the Pope was an order, and so the country house was packed away with other dreams that were to come true all in God's good time.
But the realization of love's dream did not come true, for Raphael had a rival. Death claimed his bride.
She was buried in the Pantheon, where within a year Raphael's wornout body was placed beside hers; and there the dust of both mingle.
The history of this love-tragedy has never been written; it lies buried there with the lovers. But a contemporary said that the fear of an enforced separation broke the young woman's heart; and this we know, that after her death, Raphael's hand forgot its cunning, and his frame was ripe for the fever that was so soon to burn out the strands of his life.
Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Perugino and Fra Bartolomeo had all made names for themselves before Raphael appeared upon the scene. Yet they one and all profited by his example, and were the richer in that he had lived.
Michelangelo was born nine years before Raphael and survived him forty-three years.