Portrait of Pope Clement VII

In the 1580s Francesco I de' Medici was building a gallery of his ancestors, knee-length family portraits, and had 22 of them painted between 1584 and 1586. Clement VII, the man in this one, had been dead about 50 years by then. Born Giulio de' Medici, he wore the papal tiara from 1523 to 1534, and those years are remembered for two things he could not stop. In 1527 mutinous imperial troops sacked Rome while he sheltered in the Castel Sant'Angelo. A few years later Henry VIII of England asked him to annul the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Clement refused, and England broke away from Rome. Naldini shows him seated in the white rochet and red camauro cap of a pope.