But in his panel pictures, when he was not hurried, his work continued to improve until he reached his crowning achievement in the Sistine Madonna painted three years before his death.
Raphael was thirty-seven when he died in 1520, and very far from coming to the end of his powers of learning.

Each picture that he painted revealed to him new difficulties to conquer, and new experiments to try, in his art.

We seem compelled to think that had he lived and laboured for another score of years, the history of painting in Italy might have been different.

In Rome and Florence no successor attempted to improve upon his work.

His pupils and assistants were more numerous than those of any other painter, but when they had obtained some of his facility of drawing and painting they were contented.