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Bernardo Dovizi, called Bibbiena after his home town, was one of the most powerful men in Rome around 1516, private secretary to the Medici pope Leo X, a diplomat, and the author of a bawdy comedy that had delighted the papal court. He was also close enough to Raphael that the painter was betrothed to his niece, a marriage Raphael kept postponing until his early death. Here the cardinal sits in his red silk mozzetta and biretta, a letter in hand. The picture is so stiff by Raphael's standards that scholars still debate how much of it he actually painted and how much came from his busy workshop.