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Eloge de l'Art par Alain Truong
28 mai 2010

Raphael's Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel Announced at the V&A

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Raphael, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes. Photo © Vatican Museums

LONDON.- The V&A announces that four of the ten tapestries designed by Raphael for the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City will go on show in September 2010. These are the original tapestries from the only series designed by Raphael of which examples survive, and are comparable with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling as masterpieces of High Renaissance art. The tapestries will be displayed alongside the full-size designs for them – the famous Raphael Cartoons, which have been on display in the V&A since 1865. This will be the first time that the designs and tapestries have been displayed together – something Raphael himself never witnessed. The tapestries have not been shown before in the UK.

The tapestries, of the Acts of St Peter and St Paul, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, Christ’s Charge to Peter, The Healing of the Lame Man, and The Sacrifice at Lystra, were made for the Sistine Chapel almost 500 years ago. Raphael was commissioned by Pope Leo X to design these great tapestries, which were woven in Brussels, Europe’s leading centre for tapestry-weaving, and then sent to Rome for display. As the cartoons remained in Brussels, Raphael himself never saw the cartoons beside the tapestries woven from them.

Several European monarchs, including Henry VIII, later commissioned copies of the tapestries which were made from the cartoons in Brussels. In 1623 Charles I, while Prince of Wales, had the cartoons brought to England to have his own set woven in the Mortlake tapestry workshops, and they have remained in England ever since.

The Vatican Museums own the tapestries from the Sistine Chapel. The cartoons belong to the Queen, but have been on long-term loan to the V&A since Queen Victoria lent them in 1865. The cartoons are too fragile to leave the Museum building so they have never left the V&A.

The four tapestries will be hung in the V&A’s Raphael Gallery next to the seven cartoons. The design of each cartoon corresponds in every point, but in reverse, to the tapestry it was made for. The weavers cut Raphael’s cartoons into strips and copied them closely, weaving each tapestry from the back. The front image was thus the reverse of its cartoon. The painted strips of cartoon were joined together again later, and became prized as artworks in their own right.

The exhibition of the tapestries will take place over a six week period to coincide with the historic visit to England and Scotland of Pope Benedict XVI.

Mark Jones, Director of the V&A said: “This is a marvellous opportunity to see great Renaissance masterpieces reunited for the first time in almost 500 years. We are very happy to show these important works in our Raphael Gallery.”

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The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, c. 1519. Tapestry in silk and wool, with silver-gilt threads, height 490 cm, width 441 cm. Musei Vaticani, Vatican

The tapestry was made by Pieter van Edingen Aelst, after a cartoon by Raphael Sanzio.

Luke (5:1-11) recounts how Jesus, sitting in a boat, began teaching the multitudes on the shore. Then he asked Simon Peter to head towards deep water and cast the fishing nets again. Peter obeyed and they caught such a large amount of fish, that the nets began to break. They called for help and they filled both boats, so that they began to sink. Simon Peter fell down at Jesus' feet, saying "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!". For amazement had seized him and also James, son of Zebedee, his brother John and all their companions, because of the catch of fish which they had taken. And Jesus said to Simon "Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men."

In the background, one can recognize the Vatican hill, with the towers along the wall of Leo IV, and Saint Peter's under construction. The cranes in the foreground, symbols of vigilance, are contrasted with the seagulls that allude to sin and apostasy.

In the lower border two episodes in the life of Giovanni de'Medici (Pope Leo X) are depicted: on the left, his retinue, as he arrives in Rome for the conclave. On the right, the election of March 11, 1513. The border simulates a relief and is executed in chiaroscuro.

Raphael's designs revolutionized the tradition of tapestry weaving, for they required a faithful rendering of atmosphere, light, textures, and pictorial form that had never been seen in this medium before. Here, for the first time, the usual monochrome background, or one depicting flowers and small ornaments, was abandoned in favour of a genuine pictorial space, in which the figures could move about.

The seven cartoons in V&A:

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Raphael, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1515, Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas, 360 x 400 cm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London) © Victoria & Albert Museum

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Raphael, The Handing-over the Keys, 1515. Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas, 345 x 535 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London © Victoria & Albert Museum

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Raphael, St Paul Preaching in Athens (1515). Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas, 390 x 440 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London  © Victoria & Albert Museum

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Raphael, The Death of Ananias (1515), Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas, 385 x 440 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London  © Victoria & Albert Museum

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Raphael, The Healing of the Lame Man (1515-16), Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas, 340 x 540 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London © Victoria & Albert Museum

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Raphael, St Paul before the Proconsul (1515), Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas. Victoria and Albert Museum, London  © Victoria & Albert Museum

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Raphael, The Sacrifice at Lystra (1515), Bodycolour on paper mounted onto canvas (tapestry cartoon), 350 x 560cm. Lent by H.M. The Queen. Victoria and Albert Museum, London   © Victoria & Albert Museum

The Raphael Cartoons are seven large cartoons for tapestries, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, painted by the High Renaissance painter Raphael in 1515-16 and showing scenes from the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. They are the only surviving members of a set of ten cartoons commissioned by Pope Leo X for tapestries for the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Palace, which are still (on special occasions) hung below Michelangelo's famous ceiling. Reproduced in the form of prints, they 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. Admiration of them reached its highest pitch in the 18th and 19th centuries; they were described as "the Parthenon sculptures of modern art".

Raphael, whom Michelangelo greatly disliked, was highly conscious that his work would be seen beside the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which had been finished 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 remained enormously prestigious; the Sistine set cost at least five times as much as Michelangelo's ceiling. Most of the expense was in the manufacture: although the creation of the tapestries in Brussels cost 15,000 ducats, Raphael was paid only 1,000.

The cartoons are painted in a glue distemper medium on many sheets of paper glued together (as can be seen in the full-size illustrations); they are now mounted on a canvas backing. They are all slightly over 3 m (3 yd) tall, and from 3 to 5 m (3 to 5 yd) wide; the figures are therefore over-lifesize. Although some colours have faded, they are in general in very good condition. The tapestries are mirror-images of the cartoons, as they were worked from behind; Raphael's consciousness of this in his designs appears to be intermittent. Raphael's workshop would have assisted in their completion; they were finished with great care, and actually show a much more subtle range of colouring than was capable of being 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 seven 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. Various other sets were made later, including one acquired by Henry VIII of England in 1542; King François I of France had another of similar date. Cartoons were sometimes returned with tapestries to the commissioner, but this clearly did not happen here. The tapestries had very wide and elaborate borders, also designed by Raphael, which these cartoons omit; presumably they had their own cartoons. The borders included ornamentation in an imitation of Ancient Roman relief sculptures and carved porphyry. The tapestries were made with both gold and silver thread; some were later burnt by soldiers to collect the precious metals. The first delivery was in 1517, and seven were displayed in the Chapel for Christmas in 1519 (then as now, their display was reserved for special occasions).

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 in reduced print versions. The Raphael of the cartoons was 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. (source wikipedia)

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