Raphael Cartoons
The Raphael Cartoons are seven large cartoon paintings on paper for tapestries, surviving from a set of ten cartoons, designed by the High Renaissance painter Raphael in 1515–1516. Commissioned by Pope Leo X for the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Palace, the tapestries show scenes from the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles and are hung below the frescoes of the Life of Moses and the Life of Christ commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV. The cartoons belong to the British Royal Collection but have been on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London since 1865.
The tapestries rivalled Michelangelo's ceiling as the most famous and influential designs of the Renaissance, and were well known to all artists of the Renaissance and Baroque through reproduction in the form of prints. Admiration of them reached its highest pitch in the 18th and 19th centuries; they were described as "the Parthenon sculptures of modern art".
Commission and the tapestries
Raphael was highly conscious that his work would be seen beneath the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which had been finished by Michelangelo only two years before, and took great care perfecting his designs, which are among his largest and most complicated. Originally the set was intended to include 16 tapestries. Raphael was paid twice by Leo, in June 1515 and December 1516, the last payment apparently being upon completion of the work. Tapestries retained their Late Gothic prestige during the Renaissance. Raphael was paid a total of 1,000 ducats. Most of the expense was in the manufacture, with the creation of the tapestries in Brussels costing 15,000 ducats.Raphael knew that the final product of his work would be produced by craftsmen rendering his design in another medium; his efforts are therefore entirely concentrated on strong compositions and broad effects, rather than felicitous handling or detail. It was partly this that made the designs so effective when later reproduced in reduced print versions.
The cartoons are painted in a glue distemper medium on many sheets of paper glued together. They are now mounted on a canvas backing and are in general in very good condition apart from some fading of the colours.
The cartoons are all slightly over 3 m tall, and from 3 to 5 m wide, with the figures being over-lifesize. The cartoons are mirror-images of the finished tapestries, which were worked from behind. Raphael's workshop would have assisted in the completion of the cartoons which were finished with great care. The cartoons show a much greater range of colours and more subtle gradation than could be reproduced in a tapestry. Some small preparatory drawings also survive: one for The Conversion of the Proconsul is also in the Royal Collection, and the Getty Museum in Malibu has a figure study of St Paul Rending His Garments. There would have been other drawings for all the subjects, which have been lost; it was from these that the first prints were made.
The tapestries had very wide and elaborate borders, also designed by Raphael, which these cartoons omit; presumably they had their own cartoons. Some of the side borders are separate pieces. The borders included ornamentation in an imitation of Ancient Roman relief sculpture and carved porphyry, as well as scenes from the life of Leo. They were themselves very influential, and sometimes used for other tapestries.
The cartoons were probably completed in 1516 and were then sent to Brussels, where the Vatican tapestries were woven by the workshop of Pieter van Aelst.
The first delivery was in 1517, and seven were displayed in the chapel for Christmas Day in 1519.
The tapestries were partly destroyed in the Sack of Rome in 1527. As they were made with both gold and silver thread, some were burnt by soldiers during the attack to extract the precious metals. The Vatican Museums have acquired tapestries and recreated sections to complete a full set, now usually displayed in a gallery, but sometimes moved to the Sistine Chapel for special occasions. They were displayed in the chapel for a week in February 2020, to mark the 500th anniversary of Raphael's death. Their layout around the chapel is a matter of discussion among scholars, as there is no record of what was originally intended.
The Raphael's cartoons were revered by The Carracci, but the great period of their influence began with Nicolas Poussin, who borrowed heavily from them and "indeed exaggerated Raphael's style; or rather concentrated it, for he was working on a much smaller scale". Thereafter they remained the touchstone of one approach to history painting until at least the early 19th century – the Raphael whose influence the Pre-Raphaelites wanted to reject was perhaps above all the Raphael of the cartoons.
Subjects
The Raphael Cartoons represent scenes from the lives of Saints Peter and Paul. As was usual, the completed tapestries reverse are a mirror image of the cartoon designs. The programme emphasised a number of points relevant to contemporary controversies in the period just before the Protestant Reformation, but especially the entrusting of the Church to Saint Peter, the founder of the papacy. There were relatively few precedents for these subjects, so Raphael was less constrained by traditional iconographic expectations than he would have been with a series on the life of Christ or Mary. He no doubt received some advice or instructions in choosing the scenes to depict. The scenes from the Life of Peter were designed to hang below the frescoes of the Life of Christ by Perugino and others in the middle register of the chapel; opposite them, the Life of Saint Paul was to hang below the Life of Moses in fresco. An intervening small frieze showed subjects from the life of Leo, also designed to complement the other series. Each sequence begins at the altar wall, with the Life of Peter on the right side of the Chapel and Life of Paul on the left. Including the three subjects with no surviving cartoons, the set contains :Life of Peter
- The Miraculous Draught of Fishes
- Christ's Charge to Peter The key moment in the Gospels for the claims of the Papacy
- The Healing of the Lame Man
- ''The Death of Ananias''
Life of Paul
- The Stoning of St Stephen at which Paul was present before his conversion.
- The Conversion of Saint Paul
- The Conversion of the Proconsul or The Blinding of Elymas. Paul had been invited to preach to the Roman proconsul of Paphos, Sergius Paulus, but is heckled by Elymas, a "magus", whom Paul miraculously causes to go temporarily blind, thus converting the proconsul.
- The Sacrifice at Lystra. After Paul miraculously cures a cripple, the people of Lystra see him and his companion Barnabas as gods, and want to make a sacrifice to them. Paul tears his garments in disgust, whilst Barnabas speaks to the crowd, persuading the young man at centre to restrain the man with the sacrificial axe.
- St Paul in prison, much smaller than the others, tall and narrow. This is also missing from the later tapestry sets.
- St Paul Preaching in Athens, the figure standing at the left in a red cap is a portrait of Leo; next to him is Janus Lascaris, a Greek scholar in Rome. The kneeling couple at the right were probably added by Giulio Romano, then an assistant to Raphael.