Self-portrait

A young man in a black cap looks out calmly from a plain brown ground, his shadow falling to the right. This small panel is the face of Raphael in his early twenties, and it may never have been finished.

The story behind the painting

Raphael painted this small oil on poplar between about 1504 and 1506, during his formative years in Florence; Wikidata simply gives the 1500s. It is one of the few portraits by him to survive from before 1508. The panel originally hung in the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino and was sent to Florence in 1631, described as a portrait of Raphael by his own hand. It probably reached the Medici through Vittoria della Rovere, who brought prized works from her family as part of her dowry, and was likely a gift to her brother-in-law, Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici. It appears in his 1675 inventory and in the Uffizi's of 1890.

What to look for

Only head and shoulders are shown, against plain brown. The shirt collar is bare and unpainted, revealing gesso and some underdrawing, and the hair does not overlap the background, so it looks unfinished. He wears a dark cap of the kind worn by painters, later called a raffaella, and a dark robe with a small glimpse of white undershirt: his work clothes. The face is symmetrical and calm. Sizes differ between sources: Wikipedia gives 47.3 by 34.8 cm, while Wikidata gives 47.5 by 33 cm. The surface has been restored several times and is now considered worn.

Meaning and intent

Self-portraits shaped Raphael's public image, and he also placed himself inside larger works such as the School of Athens, whose face this one resembles. The painting shows the influence of Leonardo da Vinci's chiaroscuro and sfumato, but with Raphael's own soft contours and calm expression. Its translucent glazes over a white ground reflect Flemish painting, which strongly influenced the court of Urbino, where Justus van Gent and Pedro Berruguete had worked. Wikipedia notes that the painting's fame owes more to its subject than to its quality as a painting; it was copied in many drawings, paintings and engravings.

Legacy

Before restoration, many scholars thought it a later copy based on the School of Athens. Investigations in 1983, for an exhibition at Palazzo Pitti marking the artist's anniversary, confirmed Raphael as author: infrared images showed exploratory sketching like his independent drawings, comparable with the Small Cowper Madonna, and not the work of a copyist. Why it was left unfinished remains unclear, and it is uncertain whether the costume and bonnet were painted by Raphael or added later. The portrait became part of the collection of painters' self-portraits begun by Cardinal Leopoldo, the foundation of the Uffizi's famous self-portrait collection.