The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist

By 1513 Raphael had more Rome than he could paint. Julius II died that February, Leo X was elected in March, and the new pope kept him on the Vatican rooms while the other commissions piled up, so the design would be Raphael's and much of the brush work his assistants'. Vienna catalogues this picture as Raphael and workshop, and a drawing by him for the child survives, which ties the composition firmly to his hand. The subject is a rest on the flight into Egypt, which is why Joseph is holding a mule and there are palms behind them, and the light is evening light. The panel belonged to the duke of Urbino, passed to the Borromeo family, and was sold on to a church in Milan in 1584. Vienna bought it in 1779.