La Madone au baldaquin

Raphael took this commission around 1507, still in his mid-twenties and working in Florence: a large altarpiece of the enthroned Virgin under a canopy, ordered by the Dei family for their chapel in the church of Santo Spirito. He never finished it. In the autumn of 1508 Pope Julius II called him to Rome to paint the private papal apartments, the rooms of frescoes that would make his name, and the panel was abandoned where it stood. Restorers in the late 20th century confirmed what Vasari had reported long before, that the picture is worked up to different degrees but nowhere quite complete. A friend of Raphael's bought it after his death, and since 1828 it has hung in the Pitti Palace in Florence, a short walk from the church it was meant for.