Copy of a Portrait of a Young Man after Raphael

This portrait is a copy by an unknown artist of Portrait of a Young Man by the famed Renaissance artist Raphael (1483 –1520). Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. The subject is thought to be a self-portrait.

The original copy of Raphael’s early 16^th Century portrait was in the Czartoryski Museum collections in Krakow, Poland, until it was looted by Germans during the Second World War. There are rumours that the painting was found in a bank vault, though the actual truth is unknown and it has sadly remained untraced.

The National Gallery have dated this copy to pre-18^th century.

Did you know? In the top left hand corner of the painting there is a fly, a motif that can be found in many historical paintings. Sometimes artists have included flies like this as a reference to mortality, sometimes it is a demonstration of the artists skill at illusion. Sometimes these ‘annoying flies’ are a joke with the viewer, who may mistake them for a real insect that seems to have landed on the canvas!

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