In the Apennines extended new version of the causes of death of the Italian painter, graphic and architect Raffaello Sanzio, who died exactly 500 years ago. According to scientists, is the author of many of the world’s masterpieces have been the victim of medical negligence.
Previously it was assumed that one of the most famous and recognized during the life of the artists died at 37 years of age due to syphilis, then there was the version that he has been struck with malaria or typhoid fever. The speculation has debunked the authors of a new study that conducted by historians at the University of Milan-Bicocca.
To find out the true cause of death of the genius of the Renaissance, the scientists compared data from the “biographies of the most famous painters, sculptors and architects” by Giorgio Vasari with the current contemporaries of Raphael, such as envoy of the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso Paolucci, and also studied the documents, discovered in the XIX century by the art historian Giuseppe Campori.
Researchers came to the conclusion that Raphael most likely got pneumonia. His body is weak, but instead to strengthen the health of the patient is known at the time the drugs, the doctors decided to resort to the procedure of bloodletting, which caused death. As explained by the authors of the document, the bloodletting could help with intestinal infections or other diseases, but the inflammation to use them was unacceptable.
“We cannot say that Rafael was pneumonia of bacterial or viral origin, as the current Covid-19. But judging by the description of his contemporaries, he could talk about it,” says the historian of medicine Michele Augusto Riva.
