The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila

In 452 Attila, king of the Huns, had already destroyed the city of Aquileia and was moving through northern Italy when an embassy from Rome rode out to meet him. Pope Leo I was part of it. The meeting took place in the north, near Mantua, and soon afterwards Attila turned back. Later tellers added that Saints Peter and Paul had appeared in the sky above the pope, armed with swords, and that it was this that frightened the king away.

Raphael kept the miracle and moved the place. His scene is set at the gates of Rome, and behind the riders you can pick out the Colosseum, an aqueduct and an obelisk. On the left the pope rides forward calmly with his cardinals. On the right Attila and his horsemen are thrown into confusion as they catch sight of the two apostles in the air with drawn swords.

This was the last fresco painted in the room, in 1513 and 1514, after Julius II had died. His successor had chosen to reign as Leo X, and Raphael gave the ancient Pope Leo the face of the new one. Leo X appears a second time among the riders, as the cardinal he had been only months before.