Raphael
His mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1, 1494 by his father, who had already remarried. Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven; his formal guardian became his only paternal uncle Bartolomeo, a priest, who subsequently engaged in litigation with his stepmother. He probably continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master. He had already shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been "a great help to his father". A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity. His father's workshop continued and, probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello, previously the court painter (d. 1475), and Luca Signorelli, who until 1498 was based in nearby Città di Castello.
Margarita Luti
Vasari is said by Anthony Blunt to have invented the legend of Raphael. The "Raphael-Fornarina myth" has been reimagined ever since "to fit the expectations of contemporary generations". In Comolli's 1790 "Life of Raphael", she is blamed for his death. In Balzac's "Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes", she is the "femme fatale" or "belle juive". In Joseph Méry's 1854 novel "Raphaël et la Fornarine", Raphael instead complains to the pope of the lack of blonde female models in Rome. For Baudelaire, hers were "the affections of a courtesan". Byron, struck by "La donna velata" while in Florence, styled his Venetian mistress Margherita Cogni as "La Fornarina". Caroline Norton wrote a sonnet in which Raphael tells Pope Leo X that she is his eyes. Nabokov suggests there was a feud between Raphael and Sebastiano del Piombo over rivalry for her affections, perhaps inspired by the former's "La Fornarina" and the latter's "", also known as "La Fornarina".