Julius II is a popular subject for…
April 1512 CE
Julius II is a popular subject for Raphael and his students.
The Portrait of Pope Julius II, an oil painting attributed to Italian painter Raphael, is unusual for its time and will carry a long influence on papal portraiture.
Previous papal portraits had shown them frontally, or kneeling in profile.
It is also exceptional at this period to show the sitter so evidently in a particular mood—here lost in thought.
The intimacy of this image is unprecedented in Papal portraiture, but is to became the model, followed by most future painters, including Sebastiano del Piombo and Velasquez.
For many years, a version of the painting which now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery was believed to be the original, but in 1970 opinion shifted.
The original is currently believed to be the version hanging in the National Gallery, London.
Pope Julius II, when elected pope in 1503, had promised under oath to convoke a general council with the avowed intention of reforming the church; however, as time passed, his promise has not been fulfilled.
The reforms attempted by the Council of Constance, 1414–1418, and Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence, 1431–1449, had failed.
At the synods of Orleans and Tours, in 1510, the French had decided to convoke a general council.
In view of the Council of Constance decree Frequens and the delay of Julius II to convoke a general council as he had sworn in the papal conclave, the schismatic conciliabulum had convened at Pisa in 1511.
Florence had permitted the conciliabulum to use Pisa as the location; this had enraged Julius II, and both Florence and Pisa had been placed under an interdict.
The schismatic conciliabulum at Pisa had been attended by only a few prelates including Bernardino López de Carvajal, Guillaume Briçonnet, Francesco Borgia, Federico Sanseverino, and René de Prie.
They had been encouraged by Maximilian, Holy Roman Emperor, and Louis XII.
Maximilian, who had planned since 1507 to procure his own election to the papacy after Julius II died, had at first given his protection to the schismatic conciliabulum at Pisa.
Afterwards he withdrew it, and the German Bishops also refused to have anything to do with the schismatic tendencies of the French.
Julius II had Oon July 18, 1511, summoned an general council, the Fifth Lateran Council, at Rome; it assembles here on April 19, 1512, with a very small attendance composed entirely of Italian prelates.
Julius II deprives the four leading schismatic cardinals of their dignities and deposes them from their offices, and excommunicates the conciliabulum participants.