Portrait of a Young Man with an Apple

Raphael painted this young man around 1505, when he was in his early twenties and moving between Urbino and Florence, still absorbing everything the older Florentine masters could teach him about how a face turns in the light. The sitter has never been named for certain. The picture came down through the della Rovere family of Urbino, and the best guess is Francesco Maria della Rovere, the boy named heir to the duchy in 1504. The apple in his hand may be the clue, less a piece of fruit than a small golden globe, the kind a ruler holds, hinting at the duchy he was about to inherit. It reached Florence in 1631 as part of the della Rovere inheritance, carried in by Vittoria della Rovere when she married into the Medici.