engravings after Raphael, and even original designs by him, and had them copied in the Urbino manufactory. Battista Franco at one time superintended the execution, and one of the artists was called Raffaello del Colle; his name may perhaps occasionally be inscribed on the Urbino ware, but the initials O. F. (Orazio Fontana) are the most frequent. The Transfiguration was the last oil picture of importance on which Raphael was employed; it was unfinished at his death, and was afterwards completed, together with various other works, by his scholars. The last and worst misstatement of Vasari cannot be passed over, for unfortunately, none of the biographer’s mistakes have been oftener repeated than that which ascribes the death of this great man to the indulgence of his passion for the Fornarina. Cardinal Antonelli was in possession of an original document, first published by Cancellieri, which assigns a different, and a much more probable, cause for Raphael’s death; it thus concludes,—“Life in him (Raphael) seemed to inform a most fragile bodily structure, for he was all mind; and moreover, his physical forces were much impaired by the extraordinary exertions he had gone through, and which it is wonderful to think he could have made in so short a life. Being then in a very delicate state of health, he received orders one day while at the Farnesina to repair to the court; not to lose time, he ran all the way to the Vatican, and arrived there heated and breathless; there the sudden chill of the vast rooms, where he was obliged to stand long consulting on the alterations of St. Peter’s, checked the perspiration, and he was presently seized with an indisposition. On his return home, he was attacked with a fever, which ended in his death.” Raphael was born and died on Good Friday. Some of his biographers have hence, through an oversight, asserted that he lived exactly thirty-seven years. He was born March 28, 1483, and died April 6, 1520. He was buried in the Pantheon, now the church of Sta. Maria ad Martyres, in a niche or chapel which he had himself endowed. His remains have been lately found there. Quatremère de Quincy’s ‘Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de Rafael, etc. Paris, 1824,’ has been improved and superseded by the notes to the Italian translation of Longhena, Milan, 1829. Pungileoni, the author of the ‘Elogio Storico di Giovanni Santi, Urbino, 1822,’ has been long employed in preparing a life of Raphael. The observations of Rumohr, in the third volume of his ‘Italienische Forschungen, Berlin, 1831,’ are original and valuable. A few interesting facts will be found in Fea’s ‘Notizie intorno Raffaele Sanzio, Rome 1822.’ The author, however, fails to prove the regularity of Leo’s payments to Raphael, since the latest document concerning the frescoes in the _Stanze_ has the date 1514.