The objectives of this thesis are (i) to examine the methodology of art historians in Raphael research with special reference to authentication, attribution and provenance of previously unknown or unaccepted works, and (ii) to undertake a case study in the similar authentication, attribution and provenance of a previously undocumented painting. My working hypothesis is that within this particular category of art historical scholarship it is virtually' impossible to establish convincing proofs. The scarcity of contemporary documentation relating to Raphael and his Horks has provided a licence to biographers and critics to construct a plausible history for the artist, and an orthodoxy for h~s works. The few verifiable facts, augmented by these reasonable assumptions, have become the accepted profile of the artist and the corpus of his works.