The painting represents the lucky subject of the Urbino painter Raffaello Sanzio, who depicts Giuliano della Rovere as Pope Julius II in a sitting and three-quarter position. The numerous copies of the original (some of which are listed: at Palazzo Pitti in Titian's version, an oil on canvas at the Galleria Borghese in Rome, or another at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt), testify to the success of a subject whose original was identified in the painting on poplar wood at the National Gallery in London. Julius II is portrayed between October / December 1510 and March 1512 when he swore to grow a beard until the French were defeated, in a moment of severe physical weakness. The "warrior pope", whose military actions resulted in the nickname, was portrayed by Raphael as a tired and worried man, a surprisingly intimate image, which was exhibited after his death on December 12, 1513 in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. . The green background was an afterthought by Raphael himself, perhaps a choice inspired by Pope Sixtus IV's portrait of Justus of Ghent, a modification that emphasizes the motif of the two golden acorns on the chair, which allude to his surname and highlights the red, white and green colors repeated in the stones of the rings, the colors of the three theological virtues: charity, faith and hope.