Honoured by the Pontiff and his brilliant court, idolised by a band of enthusiastic pupils, engrossed by distinguished commissions, Raffaele had few thoughts to bestow on his early home. His ties there had become few and feeble. His father's house had entirely failed; his only near relation was a maternal uncle, who retained his warm affection, and scarcely survived him. In writing to that uncle in 1514, to acquaint him with his signal success and augmenting wealth, he desires special commendations to the Duke and Duchess, modestly suggesting that they might be pleased to hear how one of their servants was doing himself honour. Gratifying as his extending reputation must have been to them, we find no trace of special exertions on their part to promote it. Indeed, they had ample occupation on their own concerns, in the revolution which soon after exiled them during the rest of Leo's pontificate.

ISABELLA OF ARAGON

After the picture by Raphael in the Louvre

One of Raffaele's best patrons was Agostino Chigi, a Sienese banker, who, after a most successful career at Rome, became in the prime of life the millionaire of his day, and who employed his great wealth, and the preponderating influence it gave him with the papal government, in a judicious promotion of art. His commissions to Raffaele include the mural paintings of his chapel in the Madonna della Pace, the architecture, sculpture, and mosaics of his other chapel in the Madonna del Popolo, and the architecture and internal decorations of his urban villa, now the Farnesina. The last has a melancholy interest, from being the latest work which exercised the cares of the illustrious artist. Whilst superintending its frescoes in March, 1520,[187] a summons from the Pope brought him with hurried steps to the Vatican, where, arriving overheated, he was detained in a large and chilly saloon until perspiration was checked. An attack of fever naturally followed, which, advancing to the stage called pernicious, proved too much for his delicate and over-excited frame, especially when still further exhausted by injudicious bleeding, in a belief that the attack was pleurisy. Aware of his danger, he sought support in his hour of need from the ministrations of religion and the rites of his Church. Such is the now received account. The most authentic particulars are contained in a letter, dated from Rome five days after his death.

"About ten o'clock on Good Friday night [April 6th] died Raffaele of Urbino, the most gentle and most eminent painter, to the universal regret of all, but especially of the learned.... Envious death, cutting short his beautiful and laudable undertakings, has torn from us this master, still young, upon his very natal day. The Pope himself indulges in uncontrolled grief, and, during the fifteen days of his illness, sent at least six times to visit and console him.... We have, indeed, been bereaved of one of rare excellence, whose loss every noble spirit ought to bewail and lament, not simply with passing words, but in studied and lasting elegies. He is said to have left 16,000 ducats, including 5000 in cash, to be divided for the most part among his friends and household; the house of Bramante,[188] which he purchased for 3000 ducats, he has given to the Cardinal [Bibbiena] of S. Maria in Portico. He was buried at the Rotonda, whither he was borne by a distinguished cortège. His soul is beyond a doubt gone to contemplate those heavenly mansions where no trouble enters, but his memory and his name will linger long on earth, in his works and in the minds of virtuous men.—Much less loss, in my opinion, though the populace may think otherwise, has the world sustained in the death of Agostino Chigi last night, as to which I say little, not yet having heard of his affairs. I have only learned that, between cash, debts owing to him, securities, alum-mines, real estate, bank capital, appointments, bullion, and jewels, he has left eight millions of golden ducats."

It may be that Raffaele was timeously taken from the evil to come; since death exempted him from witnessing like Michael Angelo, a deluge of mediocrity he would have been powerless to withstand. But the blow was deadened by no such calculation, and seldom have obsequies so pompous been accompanied by grief as universal. By the bier, around which his funeral rites were celebrated, there was hung his great picture of the Transfiguration: the inspired beauty of its upper portion, and the unfinished state of the remainder, most touchingly testified his almost superhuman powers, and their untimely extinction. The place of his sepulture was behind an altar in the Pantheon Church, for the erection and endowment of which he provided by testamentary bequest, and where his bones have of late been reverently but unwarrantably disturbed. This selection appears to have been dictated by the recent interment near the spot of Maria Bibbiena, the grand-niece of his friend the Cardinal, to whom he had been betrothed, and who had lately predeceased him. The little that we know of this engagement is from the painter's own letter to his uncle in 1514; and it would seem to have been sought by the Cardinal rather than by the bridegroom, who appears to have abandoned his matrimonial arrangements to friendly match-makers with more than Italian indifference. The idle tale of his looking to a Cardinal's hat is now set at rest, as well as nearly all the gossip that had long circulated as to his supposed dissolute habits, and his liason with that Roman matron whose ample contours and rich flesh-tints have come down to us on his canvasses, and who, whether his mistress or not (examples of such licence being then almost universal), seems to have been a favourite model in his school.[189]

The same pure taste and feeling for beauty, which characterise the frescoes and pictures of Sanzio, would have raised him to equal excellence in other branches of art. They are visible in his architectural compositions, and in his numerous drawings. The statue of Jonah in the Sta. Maria del Popolo, supposed to have been modelled, if not wrought, by his hand, proves what he might have attained in sculpture. He had no time for literary undertakings, but some sonnets, casually preserved on the back of his sketches, exhibit him as a cultivator of letters. An interesting result of his official charge of the antique monuments remains in an eloquent report to the Pope, in which,

"Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread,
Shakes off the dust, and rears its reverend head."