Portrait of Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luigi de' Rossi (copy after Raphael)

By 1524 the cardinal on the left here, Giulio de' Medici, had become Pope Clement VII. That year Federico Gonzaga, the young marquis of Mantua, saw Raphael's portrait of Pope Leo in the Medici house in Florence and asked Clement for it. The pope agreed. Ottaviano de' Medici, who ran the family's affairs in Florence, stalled, saying the picture first needed a new gilt frame. Meanwhile he had Andrea del Sarto copy it in secret, down to the dirt stains and the window reflected in the gilt ball on the pope's chair. This copy is what went to Mantua.

Our only witness is the biographer Giorgio Vasari. Giulio Romano, who had helped Raphael paint the original, praised the panel as Raphael's. Years later Vasari told him the truth, and Giulio would not believe it until Vasari turned the panel over and showed him the mark made in Florence. He then said he valued it no less than a Raphael, even more.

By 1612 the panel belonged to the noblewoman Barbara Sanseverino near Parma, and Duke Ranuccio Farnese seized it with the rest of her property after her execution. On the back someone painted "by the hand of Raphael of Urbino", and in 1841 the scholar Antonio Niccolini, writing in Naples, still argued that this was the original.