The death of Raphael: a new investigation sheds light on the likely cause. From the report:

The poor descriptions of that time only reported fever as the cause of death. The rumor of his over‐indulgence in the pleasures of life and in amours led to the myth that he suffered from syphilis and that a sexually transmitted disease was the main cause of his death, as often believed by public opinion still now. This opinion is actually based on the description of the last weeks of life of Raphael, provided by the Italian painter Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) in his masterpiece “Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects” (1550)….

It should be considered that Vasari was only 9 years old, when Raphael died and his masterpiece was written 30 years after the event. Therefore, it is possible that at the time of writing about Raphael’s life, he collected some rumors without verify them. For this reason, it is necessary to analyze other sources in addition to Vasari. In particular, according to some coeval testimonies, the disease lasted 15 days; Raphael was composed enough to put his affairs in order, confess his sins, and receive the last rites. The day after the death of the painter (April 6), Alfonso Paolucci, one of the agents of the Duke of Ferrara (Alfonso d’Este, 1476-1534) in Rome, wrote, “he died of a continuous and acute fever, which hit him eight days earlier.” These sources provide additional information on Raphael’s fatal illness: it was an acute disease, characterized by high and continuous fever. Actually, the disease did not immediately result in death, but lasted 1–2 weeks; furthermore, it was not severe enough to prevent him from putting his affairs in orders, including making a will.

Some authors supposed that Raphael died of a severe pneumonia, while the historian Pierluigi de Vecchi sustained that the cause of his death was malaria, although continuous fever could exclude malaria infection. A recent sexually transmitted infection—such as gonorrhea and syphilis—could not explain the incubation period; similarly, an acute manifestation of viral hepatitis could be not considered without jaundice and other signs of liver failure. No epidemics of typhus or plague were reported in the city of Rome at that time.

Without further information, it is not possible to identify with certainty the cause of Raphael’s death, although it is very likely that it was an infectious disease….

Some physicians and intellectuals even contested the utility of the bloodletting in some cases. The description of Raphael’s death by Vasari would seem to evidence this debate. In 1550, Vasari indeed wrote that the physicians “imprudently” (per poca prudenza) practiced bloodletting that weakened the painter, while he needed restoratives. This statement may demonstrate that at that time, it was commonly considered imprudent to perform a phlebotomy in a patient in the same health conditions of Raphael….

If we trust what Vasari wrote, Raphael did not mention frequent night outings in the cold or mercenary loves, which would have led doctors to suspect an “extrinsic cause” of fever—that we would name “infection” nowadays. Thus, they treated the fever as an overheating due to an “intrinsic cause”, an excess of humors (blood) in the body, practicing bloodletting that contributed to the fatal outcome of the young painter. The description of the death of the Italian painter Raphael may provide unexpected information on the Renaissance medicine and debunk the myth of an acritical use of bloodletting by medical doctors in that period….

Despite his libertine life and his love excesses that may even have led him to death, Raphael was indeed able to represent in such a sublime way the purity and grace of female beauty that for centuries in Europe “Beautiful as a Madonna of Raphael” was considered the highest praise that can be addressed to feminine beauty. His tombstone in the Pantheon in Rome reads, “Here lies Raphael, by whom Nature herself feared to be outdone while he lived, and when he died, feared that she herself would die”.

h/t Richard Love

For press reports on this study, see here and here.