Portrait of a Young Man is a painting in oil on panel, probably from 1513-1514, by the Italian High Renaissance Old Master painter and architect Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known simply as Raphael. Its abouts have been unknown since it was stolen by the Nazis, making the painting regarded by many as the most important painting lost during the war.
The subject is unknown, but many scholars have traditionally regarded it as a self-portrait; the facial features are regarded by many as compatible with, if not clearly identical to, the only undoubted Raphael self-portrait in The School of Athens in the Vatican, identified as such by Vasari. One modern suggestion was that the Kraków painting showed a woman. If it is a self-portrait, no hint is given of Raphael's profession; the portrait shows a richly-dressed and "confidently-poised" young man.
In 1798, Princess Izabela Czartoryska's son, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, traveled to Italy and acquired the painting along with Leonardo da Vinci's
Lady with an Ermine and many Roman antiquities.
In 1939, Hans Frank, Hitler's appointed Nazi governor in Poland, confiscated the painting for himself from the Czartoryski Museum of Kraków, Poland along with a Rembrandt painting and Lady with an Ermine. The three paintings were used to decorate his residence Portrait of a Young Man was last seen in 1945.
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