The version of the portrait of Julius II acquired by the Städel is captivating by virtue of its outstanding artistic quality. However, it also possesses another exceptional feature, and one which distinguishes it from the two versions known to date – those belonging to the National Gallery in London and the Uffizi in Florence. It exhibits extensive creative changes which were carried out in the course of the painting’s execution and can be made visible with the aid of such technologies as infrared reflectography and x-ray. The exceedingly free underdrawing, for example, executed with a brush as a preliminary stage in the work’s composition, shows the armchair in a position slightly different from that of the final solution. The acorns decorating the finials and alluding to the family crest of the della Rovere pope are entirely absent from the initial pictorial conception. Even the underdrawing of the pope’s face differs in important respects from the painted version, for instance in the rendering of the nose as well as the mouth, whose corners were drawn down much further in the underdrawing than in the finished product. Yet whereas the above-described areas were already corrected at the start of the painting process, the artist evidently did not arrive at the final position of the pope’s right hand until that process was well underway. For according to the x-ray image, it was apparently first raised in front of his body in a gesture of blessing. It will thus initially have corresponded to the portrait appearing in the frescoes executed by Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura in the same period, and casting the della Rovere pope in the role of Gregory IX presenting the decretals.

“All of these observations”, explains Prof Dr Jochen Sander, “assign the Städel work a key position within the process of this important compositional invention, in which Raphael himself and presumably also his workshop were involved.” The precision and rigour applied to the execution of the pope’s exceedingly lifelike facial features and hands contrast conspicuously with the simple rendering of the rochet – the white garment – and the background. What is more, the meticulousness with which the pope’s rings were “staged”, as it were, far surpasses their rather perfunctory treatment in the other two known versions. The employment of real gold for the elaborate representation of the rings’ settings and the fine fringes of the armchair decorations likewise points as much to the exceptional artistic standards cultivated by the painting’s author as to the fastidious expectations of his client.