Raphael’s cartoons never looked as beautiful as this

On Good Friday in 1520, Raphael, that enviably charming, graceful and prodigiously talented artist of the High Renaissance, died from a fever brought on by a secret love affair. At least, this is what his 16th‑century biographer, Giorgio Vasari, who established Raphael’s reputation as a womaniser, would have us believe – that he kicked the bucket, aged 37, after too much sex. The truth is probably more prosaic. Few art historians argue today that Raphael was a sexaholic. Rather, in the absence of hard-and-fast evidence about the cause of his death – the 500th anniversary of which is being celebrated, a tad belatedly thanks to the pandemic, by the V&A – some speculate that he expired prematurely from exhaustion.

Summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II in 1508, Raphael passed his maturity as an artist serving at the papal court in a frenzy of activity. He became so sought-after that the chief minister of Julius’s successor, Leo X, elected pope in 1513, offered Raphael his niece as a wife. There were even rumours that Raphael was in the running for a cardinal’s red hat of his own.

Securing a reputation as Europe’s most successful living artist, though, came at a price. Consider his to-do list at the peak of his career, around 1515. As well as decorating the Vatican Palace, Raphael was hard at work on important altarpieces and architectural projects – and a major commission to provide 10 monumental designs for precious tapestries along the lower side walls of the Sistine Chapel. Phew: no wonder people say that professional demands drove him to an early grave.

Now the spotlight is falling on those vast tapestry designs, seven of which survive. Known as “the Raphael cartoons” (“cartoon” here refers to a full-scale preparatory design, from the Italian cartone, or “big paper”), they have been part of the Royal Collection in Britain since 1623.

Since 1865, however, when Queen Victoria lent them to what is now the V&A, they have been on display in South Kensington. And, as soon as restrictions ease, the V&A will unveil a top-to-bottom refurbishment of Gallery 48A, aka the Raphael Court, an imposing space – replicating almost exactly the dimensions of the Sistine Chapel – where the cartoons, painted in glue tempera over charcoal underdrawing on paper, have hung since 1950. Next week, to herald this, the V&A will release new interactive online content, drawing upon an extensive “recording project” that took place last summer, when the cartoons – four of which measure more than 17ft across – were scanned and photographed, using 3D, infrared and high-resolution colour technology, generating hundreds of gigabytes of information about them for posterity. When the museum reopens, there will be additional digital interpretation via QR codes inside the gallery.

According to the V&A’s paintings curator, Ana Debenedetti, the new‑look gallery will transform how we see the cartoons. Illuminated by state-of-the-art lighting, and offset by dark walls, they should appear considerably brighter. This could be a revelation, since the old Raphael Court, dimly-lit and painted a dreary mushroom beige, had the unfortunate effect of rendering the cartoons practically monochrome. With spare parts for its out-of-date lighting system no longer available, the gallery was growing ever darker, one blown bulb at a time.

Perhaps because of this, the cartoons, despite being of immense historical importance, are, if not underappreciated, then insufficiently loved. Other factors have contributed to this state of affairs. For one thing, Raphael – once acclaimed as the pinnacle of Western art – is not held in such high esteem today. Associated with an academic strand of art history and aesthetic values that have fallen out of favour, he is considered (despite Vasari’s tittle-tattle) a less compelling figure than his moodier, more mysterious contemporaries, Michelangelo and Leonardo.

For another, the story of the cartoons’ commission, as well as their status, is complicated. Raphael was paid to design tapestries that were woven, at great expense, far away in Brussels. In other words, the cartoons were full-scale templates for finished works in another medium. Despite being looted on several occasions, these too have survived: last February, to mark the anniversary of Raphael’s death, the complete cycle of 10 tapestries illustrating scenes from the lives of St Peter and St Paul was hung inside the Sistine Chapel for a week. Should the cartoons, therefore, be lauded as independent works of art at all? Raphael lavished great care upon them but, because of their scale, and demands on his time, he also relied heavily on assistants. This was common practice during the Renaissance. Still, there is debate over which bits are by the master himself.

Furthermore, for most of the 16th century the cartoons disappeared: cut into strips and stored in crates, probably in Flanders, they eventually turned up in Genoa, where agents of the Prince of Wales, the future King Charles I, snapped them up, having been tipped off about their whereabouts, supposedly by Rubens. Even Charles, though, didn’t consider them Renaissance masterpieces; rather, he was simply after patterns for the tapestry manufactory that his father had recently established at Mortlake, beside the Thames.

It wasn’t until the end of the 17th century, when William III reassembled the cartoons and hung them, flanked by green silk curtains, in a specially designed gallery at Hampton Court, that people in Britain started to appreciate them. The artist James Thornhill, for instance, drew upon them while decorating the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. By the 18th century they were sufficiently famous for a politician to describe them as “a national treasure, a common blessing” – which is how another politician, Tristram Hunt, now the V&A’s director, thinks of them today, calling them “the greatest Renaissance treasures in the United Kingdom”.

Why are they so special? Well, the survival of monumental Renaissance cartoons, which offer all sorts of insights into an artist’s creative process, is extraordinarily rare. And the fact that these are linked to a prestigious commission for the Sistine Chapel – that holy of holies for Renaissance art, as well as Christendom – only adds to their value. Moreover, Raphael approached the task as he would a fresco: he sought to “challenge the weavers in Brussels to, as it were, paint with threads”, says Debenedetti, who has edited a forthcoming book about the cartoons. “This was a new vision.” Introducing linear perspective, for instance, revolutionised tapestry design.

Each scene is remarkable for the way it synthesises a complex message, chosen to bolster papal authority, into a clear, harmonious ensemble – which Raphael had to design in reverse, as though looking at a mirror, because he knew it would be flipped on the weaver’s loom.

New analysis also reveals that, while enlarging his original designs, Raphael – who copied freehand, rather than squaring up – continued to refine and invent on the nearly 200 sheets of paper carefully pasted together by assistants to provide the support for each cartoon. Three recently discovered watermarks confirm that the paper was manufactured in Italy in the early 16th century.

And because, following Raphael’s death, the cartoons were kept away from damp and light for years, they are, says Debenedetti, “in remarkable condition for their age. In the new gallery setting, you will see how vibrant their palette still is. They are an absolute feast for the eye.”

Information: vam.ac.uk