Portrait of a Young Man

By 1515 Raphael was the busiest artist in Rome. He was decorating the pope's rooms in the Vatican, designing tapestries, and would soon be named architect of the new Saint Peter's, more work than any one man could paint, so he ran a large workshop of assistants. That is the shadow over this small panel. Scholars still argue how much of it came from Raphael's own hand and how much from his gifted pupil Giulio Romano, who in these years was taking on more and more of the master's painting. The young sitter, turned so his face comes almost full to us, has been guessed to be Alessandro de' Medici. Raphael would be dead within five years, at 37, the workshop carrying on much of what still bore his name.