Portrait du pape Léon X

A pope frowns over an illuminated Bible, a magnifying glass in his hand, while a golden knob on his chair reflects the window of the room. Raphael painted Leo X not as an idealised saint but as a worried, real man.

The story behind the painting

Pope Leo X, born Giovanni de' Medici in Florence, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, led the Church from 1513 to 1521. He paid for work on St. Peter's Basilica partly by selling indulgences, which Martin Luther attacked in 1517, around the time Raphael began this portrait. The large painting arrived in Florence in 1518 to stand in for the pope at the wedding of his nephew Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, to Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne, a relative of King Francis I. Wikipedia dates it about 1518 to 1520; Wikidata gives 1518.

What to look for

Leo X sits in a camauro cap and an ermine-edged mozzetta, holding a gold-rimmed lens he needed for his short sight. Before him, on an orange-red cloth, lie a richly decorated silver bell and an illuminated Bible opened at the start of the Gospel of John; that real manuscript, the Hamilton Bible, made in Naples in the mid-fourteenth century, survives in Dresden. Look for the gold ball on his chair, reflecting the window and the room. Behind him stand two cardinals, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, the future Clement VII, at left, and Cardinal Luigi de' Rossi, his hand on the chair, a maternal cousin of the other two.

Meaning and intent

Vasari wrote that the figures seem not painted but in full relief: the velvet's pile, the rustling damask, the soft fur, gold and silk that look real, a parchment book more real than reality, and a silver bell more beautiful than words. For centuries popes had been shown in profile with idealised faces, kneeling to bless. Raphael, continuing what he began with Julius II in 1511, painted real people with distinct features. Leo appears as a middle-aged man with a worried, frowning look. The reflecting knob recalls Early Netherlandish masters such as Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait.

Legacy

Many copies were made, one by Vasari in 1536. The original was listed at the Uffizi in 1589; from 1799 to 1816 it was in France, taken there under Napoleon. In 2020 the Uffizi held an exhibition marking the end of its restoration, and the technical study done for it disproved the belief of several scholars that the two cardinals had been added later by another painter. The panel, about 155.5 by 119.5 cm, is in the Uffizi in Florence; Wikidata also lists the Galleria Palatina.