Der Johannesknabe

By 1518 Raphael was running one of the busiest workshops in Rome, buried in papal commissions, and paintings left his studio as team efforts. This young John the Baptist, seated in the wilderness and turning to point toward a light, comes from those crowded final years; Raphael died in 1520, only 37. Scholars still argue how much of the actual brushwork is his and how much belongs to his gifted assistants Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni, though the design is plainly the master's. A cardinal, Pompeo Colonna, ordered it, and the composition proved so popular that copies multiplied for a century. It has hung in the Uffizi since 1589.