Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere

Giorgione's Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere from around 1502 depicts the future Duke of Urbino as a young man, shortly before he succeeded to power through the violent removal of his predecessor. Della Rovere was a nephew of Pope Julius II and would become one of the most important military commanders and art patrons of his generation. The attribution to Giorgione has been questioned and reassigned by various scholars — as with most of his small painted corpus — but the psychological intensity and atmospheric handling of the face are consistent with his documented manner. Giorgione's portraits are among the most psychologically alive of the Renaissance, their subjects seeming to possess inner lives not fully revealed, creating the sense of a private consciousness glimpsed rather than a public persona presented.

Giorgione renders the young nobleman with the soft atmospheric modeling that characterizes his portrait style, using warm tones and gentle transitions that create the contemplative mood distinctive to his approach to portraiture.