The Raphael Cartoons: A Tale of Two Raphaels

Dr Mark Evans, Senior Curator of Paintings V& A: I never   thought it could happen. Of course, it' s really been depndent on this gift,   if you like, from the Pope. The Raphael Cartoons are the greatst cycle of High   Renaissance painting north of the Alps. There' s simply nothing like them in   England or indeed anywhere else, except Rome itself.

The Raphael Cartoons were design drawings. They were made of a mosaic of hundreds   of sheets of paper glued together which was then fixed to the wall. And Raphael   and his assitants painted them in situ. They would then have been rolled for   transport to BrusselstoPietr Van Aelst' s studio where they would have been cut   into metre wide strips for use by the tapestry weaves. The cartoons were brought   to England by Charles I. He paid £300 in 1623. He bought them as designs   for tapestries.

It was at the end of the 17th century that they were framed up as paintings   in their own right. Queen Victoria lent them to the Victoria and Albert Museum   in 1865 and the' ve been here ever since.

The Vatican Rome June 2010

Dr Arnold Nesselrath, Curator, Vatican Museums: Vasari called   Raphael ' I grand univerale' the universal genius. Raphael did everything he   was asked to do from painting to architecture and tapestries - the Vatican had   a huge tapestry collection,and to design them was nothing unsual for Raphael.   I thought bringing the Tapestries to the Cartoons was just a perfect set up.   I think it' s going to be really a European event on European art that has been   created from Rome to Brussels, and has been shown in London.

The Print Room, Windsor Castle

Dr Mark Evans: People tended to think of Raphael as being   in the similar personality to Mozart. That, you know, drawing was a very fluent,   easy, natural process for him. It' s rather humbling when you move from these   colossal machines - the Cartoons, five metres wide - to these eloquent little   sheets of paper.

Dr Martin Clayon: Especially in the Christ Charge to Peter   where you see the drawing done from live studio models. And this sense of freshness   of observation is still present in this drawing; 500 years ago these figures   were standing before Raphael in the studio and he drew them in their every day   clothes

Dr Mark Evans: You can imagine his saying, you know, ' Move   along a bit, you stand there, you put your hand forward, bend forward' . And   that' s precisely the ideas are coming together actually on the sheet. To simplify,   it is, sort of, one, two, three steps and then here we' ve got virtually the   scene that could be signed off by the patron. You know, ' This is what you' re   going to get' .
  The Vatican

Dr Arnold Nesselrath: There are two great things about these   tapestries. The one is that they' ve found the greatest weavers you can imagine   in Brussels who could translate Raphael' s painting into tapestries and the other   idea is that their art is so convincing that the most contrasting sovereigns   (if you imagine Henry VII, Louis XIV in France, Charles V in Vienna), they all   wanted these tapestries. They are what Vasari says a ' universal art' .

The Vatican Tapestry Conservation Studio

Dr Arnold Nesselrath: Leo X' s favourite painter was Raphael   and he was prepared to pay five times the amount of money that Michelangelo' s   ceiling had cost. You get a very good idea as to how these tapestries were made   because the cartnoons were cut into stripes…if you imagine! - cut up aRaphael   painting! But this gives you an idea [that] you can only work on a certain sections   of a tapestry. So when they were woven, the people were sitting like the restorers   now and they produced the tapestry in this way, and that' s the reason why they   had to cut up the Cartoons.
  The Raphael Gallery

Dr Mark Evans: Raphael was a great fluid draughtsman. He was   also a brilliant storyteller. They were exemplary works that artists used to   school their own drawing upon. But also to learn how to tell a story.

In the Miraculous Draught of Fishes we see the muscular figures of the fisherman   leaning to haul out from the sea their nets bursting with fish. Astounded by   this miracly, Peter falls on his knees before Christ who raises one hand in   blessing. Behind him comes St. Andrew. It' s as if the two figures of Andrew   and Peter are acting two stages in a single action. It' s quite cinematographic.

The Vatican Tapestry Conservation Studio

Dr Arnold Nesselrath: What we do now is of course checking all the fixings   that have been done over the centuries. It is of course a great chance to see   the quality. How they paint with the threads. It is one thing to have the various   colours of the single threads but it' s also a question of how the weaving is   done, and just if you look at something like the flesh of St Peter, the subtelty   with which they model the colour is alsmost like you do with the brush.

[some conversation in Italian]

They [the team of conservators] have created six thousand different colours,   each with its code, so its almost a database of threads for tapestries.

The Sistine Chapel

The tapestries were comissioned in 1515 and the first seven were hung in the   chapel on Boxing Day in 1519 and the reaction was just overwhelming. Nobody   talked about Michelangelo, nobody talked about anything else. They just looked   at these tapestries which were precious, which were flickering(they were full   of gold and silver). The impression was something that people hadn' t seen. They   called it a miracle.

Dr Mark Evans: Absolutely incredible. I thought I' d never   see it. I mean here we are -The Healing of the Lame Man. That' s wonderful. Shall   we go through into the choir?

It' s interesting how you see the fall of light much more clearly marked in   the reliefs of the bottom than actually in the…[trails off]

Dr Arnold Nesselrath: To hang tapestries in the chapel is   the only way to work out where the single tapestry belonged in relation to the   iconography, in relation to the frescoes of Michelangelo.

Dr Mark Evans: I' ve only just noitced the red figure upon   the balustrade looking down. I' d never noticed him before. The perspective in   much sharper in the Cartoons.

Dr Arnold Nesselrath: Hanging them in the chapel is a great   ocassion and to come up with a new reconstruction - that' s why we wanted to   try this out.

Michelangelo was not here. Leo X had given him work in Florence, so Michelangelo   stayed in Florence and he came back much later. But Michelangelo, when he saw   this [the tapestries], became even more competetive with Raphael. He wanted   to be the inventor of everything.

Dr Mark Evans: When you look down one get' s the ide of what   the chapel must have looked like when it ws completely dressed on both sides.   And what' s also interesting of course is to see the painted hangings alongside   the actual woven tapestries as well. Fantastic.

Well, we' ve just come out of the Sistine Chapel and seen the Raphael Tapestries   hanging there; the first time I' ve ever seen themin this, well, culturally supercharged   environment that they created to decorate. And of course it' s something that   one has read of the experience of previous visitors like Goethe in the 18th   century. But to actually see the works in this setting is quite extraordinary.   And I feel like I now understand these objects in a way that I never did before.

Dr Arnold Nesselrath: Rapheael is one of the greatest artists   of all times. He' s one of the most complex artists of all times. And people   will understand that these tapestries and the cartoons are a perfect match and   can compete easily with Michelangelo' s frescoes.

Dr Mark Evans: A historian once said that the past is a foreign   country. And certainly looking back as we do from the 21st century to the world   of Raphael, of the beginning of the sixteenth, it' s a bit like looking lthe   wrong way down a telescope and exhibitions such as these give us a unique insight   into that cretive creative spark. The creative sparks that flew when Raphael   Cartoons were reunited with the tapestries being woven from them. It' s an extraordinary   opporunity to see two great cycles of art that are intimately related but for   which for 500 years have lived separate lives.