Portrait of Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luigi de' Rossi

This 1525 copy of Raphael's famous portrait of Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luigi de' Rossi was commissioned by the Medici to replace the original sent to Rome. Andrea del Sarto's copy was so accurate that even Raphael's assistant Giulio Romano was reportedly fooled, attesting to Andrea's extraordinary technical skill. Del Sarto's portraits are among the most accomplished productions of the Florentine High Renaissance, combining his characteristic warmth of color and atmospheric modeling with the psychological directness that made him as acute an observer of individual character as any of his contemporaries. Working in Florence throughout his career except for a brief period in France at the invitation of Francis I, he developed a portrait manner that absorbed the lessons of Leonardo and Raphael while achieving something distinctly his own: a warmth and human immediacy that his more cerebral contemporaries sometimes lacked.

The painting demonstrates Andrea's phenomenal ability to replicate Raphael's technique, matching the subtle color variations and spatial relationships of the original with such precision that the copy became famous in its own right.