Portrait of a Young Man

Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man, painted around 1513–1514, is one of the most haunting absences in the history of Western art. Before it disappeared, the panel painting depicted an elegantly dressed young man with the confidence and poise characteristic of Raphael's mature portraiture — many scholars have long suspected the sitter may be Raphael himself, though this has never been proven. The work was brought to Poland in 1798 by Prince Adam George Czartoryski, who acquired it on travels through Italy, and it became one of the prize possessions of the Czartoryski collection in Kraków.\n\nWhen Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the painting was seized by Hans Frank, Hitler's appointed governor of occupied Poland, and transported west. It was last reliably documented in a palace in Moravia in early 1945. Since then, its fate has remained unknown — no confirmed sighting, no credible provenance trail. Considered the most significant painting lost during the Second World War, it would be worth well over $100 million were it ever to resurface. In the Princes Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, the painting's original frame still hangs on the wall — empty, a deliberate memorial to an absence that has never been resolved.