From early in its life, it was specially hung at the pillars of the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, on the main route from the north into Rome, on feast and high holy days.

[2] The intimacy of this image was unprecedented in papal portraiture, but became the model, "what became virtually a formula", followed by most future painters, including Sebastiano del Piombo and Diego Velázquez.

"[4] According to Erika Langmuir, "it was the conflation of ceremonial significance and intimacy which was so startling, combined with Raphael's ability to define the inner structure of things along with their outer texture".

[5] The painting can be dated to between June 1511 and March 1512, when Julius let his beard grow as a sign of mourning for the loss in war of the city of Bologna.

These revealed that the background of the painting behind the chair had been entirely repainted, concealing an inventory number from the Borghese collection and the green textile hanging now visible after the overpaint was removed in 1970.

[13] The National Gallery's Cecil Gould published the results of the research in 1970, asserting that Raphael's original had been rediscovered, an attribution that is now generally accepted.

[12] Julius II commissioned from Raphael[15] this painting and Madonna of Loreto which resided at Santa Maria del Popolo,[16][17][18] at the entrance gate to Rome.

[25] The paintings were still recorded as part of the Borghese collection in 1693,[27] as a small inventory number 118 at the bottom left of the London Julius shows.

The discovery of this number, hidden by over-paint, in x-ray photographs in 1969 was one of the key pieces of evidence establishing the primacy of the London version.