A self-portrait by a young Raphael has returned to Florence following its recent loan to the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco for the exhibition Truth and Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelites and the Old Masters. Painted in the early 1500s, the work is considered to be one of the earliest self-portraits by the Urbino-born Renaissance artist, second only to a drawing at the Ashmolean in Oxford.
The painting reached the Uffizi in 1631 as part of the artistic treasures brought with Vittoria della Rovere upon her marriage to Ferdinand II de’ Medici. Now back in Florence, the self-portrait will be on display initially in the Sala di Saturno in Palazzo Pitti, where it will stay for some months while its permanent home on the first floor of the Uffizi is being renovated and rearranged to host the museum’s vast collection of self-portraits. When the space is ready, Raphael’s painting will be moved across the river to become “one of the cornerstones of the new self-portrait rooms in the Uffizi Gallery,” said the museum’s director, Eike Schmidt.