Raffaello, on the contrary, just before his death, seemed to be exhaling into a nebulous mist of brilliant but unsatisfactory performances.

Diffusing the rich and facile treasures of his genius through a host of lesser men, he had almost ceased to be a personality.

Even his own work, as proved by the Transfiguration, was deteriorating.

The blossom was overblown, the bubble on the point of bursting; and all those pupils who had gathered round him, drawing like planets from the sun their lustre, sank at his death into frigidity and insignificance.

Only Giulio Romano burned with a torrid sensual splendour all his own.
Fortunately for the history of the Renaissance, Giulio lived to evoke the wonder of the Mantuan villa, that climax of associated crafts of decoration, which remains for us the symbol of the dream of art indulged by Raffaello in his Roman period.
These pupils of the Urbinate claimed now, on their master's death, and claimed with good reason, the right to carry on his great work in the Borgian apartments of the Vatican.