Raphael
By the end of 1508, Raphael had moved to Rome, where he lived for the rest of his life. He was invited by the new Pope Julius II, perhaps at the suggestion of his architect Donato Bramante, then engaged on St. Peter's Basilica, who came from just outside Urbino and was distantly related to Raphael. Unlike Michelangelo, who had been kept lingering in Rome for several months after his first summons, Raphael was immediately commissioned by Julius to fresco what was intended to become the Pope's private library at the Vatican Palace. This was a much larger and more important commission than any he had received before; he had only painted one altarpiece in Florence itself. Several other artists and their teams of assistants were already at work on different rooms, many painting over recently completed paintings commissioned by Julius's loathed predecessor, Alexander VI, whose contributions, and arms, Julius was determined to efface from the palace. Michelangelo, meanwhile, had been commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
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.