Margarita Luti
According to Vasari, Raphael was a "very amorous man and affectionate towards the ladies". He is said to have painted portraits of his mistress and to have assigned the engraver il Baviera to serve as her page. When commissioned by Agostino Chigi to decorate the Villa Farnesina, he was unable to dedicate himself properly to his work due to his infatuation - until she was allowed to come to live at his side. Again according to Vasari, it was Raphael's immoderate indulgence in "amorous pleasures", one day taken to excess, that brought on the fever which led to the young artist's death in 1520. Although in the Pantheon he lies beside his fiancée Maria, daughter of his patron Bernardo Dovizi, Raphael had long delayed his marriage; on his deathbed he sent his mistress away "with the means to live an honest life".
Raphael’s Ephemeris
"Raphael’s Ephemeris" was first issued as part of an almanac entitled "The Prophetic Messenger" in the early nineteenth century. ‘Raphael’, the name given to one of three archangels in the Old Testament, was in fact one Robert Cross Smith (1795–1832), a former carpenter who had developed an interest in astrology. Smith first used the pseudonym in 1824 when he edited a periodical called "The Straggling Astrologer", later re-published as "The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century". He also referred to himself as the ‘Royal Merlin’. "The Straggling Astrologer" was a relative failure, but by 1827 Smith had assumed editorship of "The Prophetic Messenger", which was read widely by astrologers of the day, and contributed to a renaissance of interest in astrology in the nineteenth century.