In the Sala di Apollo, at the right of the door as we enter, is Andrea’s portrait of himself, a serious and mysterious face shining out of darkness, and below it is Titian’s golden Magdalen, No. 67, the same ripe creature that we saw at the Uffizi posing as Flora, again diffusing Venetian light.  On the other side of the door we find, for the first time in Florence, Murillo, who has two groups of the Madonna and Child on this wall, the better being No. 63, which is both sweet and masterly.  In No. 56 the Child becomes a pretty Spanish boy playing with a rosary, and in both He has a faint nimbus instead of the halo to which we are accustomed.  On the same wall is another fine Andrea, who is most lavishly represented in this gallery, No. 58, a Deposition, all gentle melancholy rather than grief.  The kneeling girl is very beautiful.

Finally there are Van Dyck’s very charming portrait of Charles I of England and Henrietta, a most deft and distinguished work, and Raphael’s famous portrait of Leo X with two companions:  rather dingy, and too like three persons set for the camera, but powerful and deeply interesting to us, because here we see the first Medici pope, Leo X, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son Giovanni, who gave Michelangelo the commission for the Medici tombs and the new Sacristy of S. Lorenzo; and in the young man on the Pope’s right hand we see none other than Giulio, natural son of Giuliano de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s brother, who afterwards became Pope as Clement VII.  It was he who laid siege to Florence when Michelangelo was called upon to fortify it; and it was during his pontificate that Henry VIII threw off the shackles of Rome and became the Defender of the Faith.  Himself a bastard, Giulio became the father of the base-born Alessandro of Urbino, first Duke of Florence, who, after procuring the death of Ippolito and living a life of horrible excess, was himself murdered by his cousin Lorenzino in order to rid Florence of her worst tyrant.  In his portrait Leo X has an illuminated missal and a magnifying glass, as indication of his scholarly tastes.  That he was also a good liver his form and features testify.

Of this picture an interesting story is told.  After the battle of Pavia, in 1525, Clement VII wishing to be friendly with the Marquis of Gonzaga, a powerful ally of the Emperor Charles V, asked him what he could do for him, and Gonzaga expressed a wish for the portrait of Leo X, then in the Medici palace.  Clement complied, but wishing to retain at any rate a semblance of the original, directed that the picture should be copied, and Andrea del Sarto was chosen for that task.  The copy turned out to be so close that Gonzaga never obtained the original at all.