Bildnis Leos X.

Raphael began this portrait around 1518, and the timing matters. Only a year earlier, in 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther had sent out his complaints against the Church, and one of his loudest was aimed straight at this man. Pope Leo X was raising money for the new Saint Peter's by selling indulgences, pardons you could buy. Yet nothing in the picture hints at the storm coming for the Church. Leo sits heavily at a table, a Medici, born to wealth and comfort. He was short-sighted, and Raphael shows it plainly, giving him a gold-rimmed eyeglass he holds in one hand. In front of him is an illuminated Bible and a finely worked silver bell. Look at the golden knob on his chair, where you can make out a tiny reflection of a window and the room. Beside him stand two cardinals, both his relatives. The one gripping the chair, Giulio de' Medici, would himself become pope a few years later. For a long time scholars thought those two cardinals were added by another hand. A recent cleaning showed the whole canvas is Raphael's, painted in Rome as the old certainties of the Church were quietly beginning to crack.