Portrait of Pope Julius II

Julius II grew a beard in June 1511, after French troops took Bologna away from him, and shaved it off in March 1512. That nine-month window is how the portrait is dated. A bearded pope was unusual enough that people read it as mourning for the territory he had lost, and Raphael painted him seated and looking down, an old man near the end of a papacy spent largely at war. The finials on his chair are acorns, the badge of his family, the della Rovere, whose name means oak. Several versions of the picture survive. The National Gallery in London holds the one most scholars accept as the first, the Uffizi has another, and the Stadel bought this panel in 2010. Cleaning it brought up changes made while the painting was under way that the other versions do not show. Frankfurt catalogues it as Raphael and workshop.