Portrait of Pope Julius II
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| Artist | Raphael |
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| Year | 1511–12 |
| Medium | Oil on wood |
| Dimensions | 108 cm × 80.7 cm (43 in × 31.8 in) |
| Location | National Gallery, London, Uffizi and other versions |
Portrait of Pope Julius II is an oil painting of 1511–12 by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael. The portrait of Pope Julius II was unusual for its time and would carry a long influence on papal portraiture. From early in its life, it was specially hung at the pillars of the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, on the main route from the north into Rome, on feast and high holy days. Giorgio Vasari, writing long after Julius' death, said that "it was so lifelike and true it frightened everyone who saw it, as if it were the living man himself".
The painting exists in many versions and copies, and for many years, a version of the painting which now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence was believed to be the original or prime version, but in 1970 opinion shifted. The original is currently believed to be the version owned by the National Gallery, London.
The presentation of the subject was unusual for its time. Previous Papal portraits showed them frontally, or kneeling in profile. It was also "exceptional" at this period to show the sitter so evidently in a particular mood – here lost in thought. The intimacy of this image was unprecedented in Papal portraiture, but became the model, "what became virtually a formula", followed by most future painters, including Sebastiano del Piombo and Diego Velázquez. The painting "established a type for papal portraits that endured for about two centuries." According to Erica Langmuir, "it was the conflation of ceremonial significance and intimacy which was so startling, combined with Raphael's ability to define the inner structure of things along with their outer texture".
The painting can be dated to between June 1511 and March 1512, when Julius let his beard grow as a sign of mourning for the loss in war of the city of Bologna. Raphael had also included fresco portraits of the bearded Julius, representing earlier popes, in the Raphael Rooms of the Vatican Palace, in The Mass at Bolsena, with portraits of his daughter Felice della Rovere and Raphael himself in the same group, and in the painting representing Jurisprudence round a window in the Stanza della Segnatura, as well as in the Sistine Madonna.
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