Portrait of Francesco Maria II della Rovere

In October 1571 a combined Christian fleet beat the Ottoman navy at Lepanto, and among the young noblemen who had sailed with it was Francesco Maria della Rovere, heir to the Duchy of Urbino, then barely into his twenties. Soon after, his father Guidobaldo II commissioned this portrait to mark the son's part in the campaign. Barocci shows him in gleaming armour, one hand resting on a plumed helmet, set against a very dark ground. The polished steel, the gauntlet and the shield are painted to register wealth as much as valour. Barocci is said to have based the proud three-quarter pose on an older portrait he could study in the ducal palace at Urbino.