With his incomparable work of the Transfiguration, ceased the life and the labors of Raffaelle; he did not live to entirely complete it, and the few remaining parts were finished by his scholar, Giulio Romano. While engaged upon it, he was seized with a fever, of which he died on his birth-day, Good Friday, April 7th, 1520, aged 37 years. His body lay in state in the chamber where he had been accustomed to paint, and near the bier was placed the noble picture of the Transfiguration. The throngs who came to pay their respects to the illustrious artist were deeply affected; there was not an artist in Rome but was moved to tears by the sight, and his death was deplored throughout Italy as a national calamity. The funeral ceremony was performed with great pomp and solemnity, and his remains were interred in the church of the Rotunda, otherwise called the Pantheon. The Cardinal Bembo, at the desire of the Pope, wrote the epitaph which is now inscribed on his tomb. CHARACTER OF RAFFAELLE. All cotemporary writers unite in describing Raffaelle as amiable, modest, kind, and obliging; equally respected and beloved by the high and the low. His beauty of person and noble countenance inspired confidence, and strongly prepossessed the beholder in his favor at first sight. Respectful to the memory of Perugino, and grateful for the instructions he had received from him, he exerted all his influence with the Pope, that the works of his master in one of the ceilings of the Vatican might be spared, when the other paintings were destroyed to make room for his own embellishments. Just and generous to his cotemporaries, though not ignorant of their intrigues, he thanked God that he had been born in the days of Buonarotti. Gracious towards his pupils, he loved and instructed them as his own sons; courteous even to strangers, he cheerfully extended his advice to all who asked it, and in order to make designs for others, or to direct them in their studies, he had been known to neglect his own works, rather than refuse them his assistance. LA BELLA FORNARINA. Raffaelle was never married, though by no means averse to female society. The Cardinal da Bibiena offered him his niece, which high alliance he is said to have declined because the honors of the purple were held out to him by the Pope, who favored him greatly, and made him groom of his chamber. Early in life he became attached to a young woman, the daughter of a baker at Rome, called by way of distinction, La Bella Fornarina, to whom he was solely and constantly attached, and he left her in his will sufficient for an independent maintenance. The rest of his property he bequeathed to a relative in Urbino, and to his favorite scholars, Giulio Romano, and Gio. Francesco Penni. THE GENIUS OF RAFFAELLE.