Ancient Wisdom and the Heralding of the Christ Impulse

And then, as we think of the figure of Raphael, how he has lived through the centuries and is still living today, and then think of what remains of his work and what has already been destroyed, and when we reflect that all material things must eventually perish, then we know well that the living essence of these pictures will have been taken into the souls of men before the pictures themselves have perished. For centuries yet, reproductions will of course be available; but that which alone can give a true idea of Raphael's personality, of what he was, what his own hands accomplished—that will crumble into dust, his works will have perished. And nothing on our Earth can preserve them.