The genius arose in Raphael, and when he produced in the last ten or twelve years of his life, Madonna after Madonna, so far in advance of anything that had hitherto been done, so great in beauty as to leave his fellow artists lost in wonder, so lofty in conception that the term "divine" was applied to him in his lifetime, it was inevitable that a decadence should set in, for so far as the intelligence could see, whatever came after him must be inferior. He did not ascend to the height of Phidias, for a pure ideal of spiritual form is beyond the power of the painter,[b] but as with Praxiteles he reached a perfect human ideal, and so gained the supreme pinnacle of his art. But while there was an inevitable decadence after him, as after Praxiteles, it was, as already indicated, only in the character of the art, for in Italy artists generally were as busy for a hundred years after Raphael, as during his time. Michelangelo, Titian, and the other giants who were working when Raphael died, kept up the renown of the period for half a century or so, but it seemed impossible for artists who came on the scene after Raphael's death, to enter upon an entirely original course. The whole of the new generation seemed to cling to the models put forward by the great Urbino painter, save some of the Venetians who had a model of their own in Titian. [b] See Chap. IX. Thus it is clear that the rise and decline of the Grecian and Italian movements were due to well ascertained causes which had nothing to do with a national æsthetic impulse; nor is there evidence of such an impulse connected with other art developments.