Weaving a spell

We tend to take for granted the fact that the V&A houses one of the great wonders of the Italian High Renaissance: Raphael’s remarkable tapestry cartoons celebrating the lives of St Peter and St Paul. These tapestries were designed for the Sistine Chapel to be hung around the lowest tier of the walls on ceremonial occasions, and thus had to complement (if not compete with) Michelangelo’s awesome ceiling decoration. Raphael excelled himself in the inventiveness of these works — they are masterpieces of succinct harmonious design, and feel so right and natural in their depictions that their imagery has subtly influenced the way we visualise biblical characters. To celebrate the Pope’s visit to England, four of the original tapestries are being lent to the V&A by the Vatican Museums. This will be the first time the tapestries have been reunited with the cartoons since they were woven in Brussels.

The surviving seven of the original ten cartoons commissioned by Pope Leo X have been part of the Royal Collection in England since Charles I bought them in 1623, while still Prince of Wales. In 1865, Queen Victoria gave them on long loan to what was then the South Kensington Museum, and they’ve been in the V&A ever since, too fragile to be moved. They are, after all, working drawings, which had to be cut up into vertical strips so that the weavers could accurately follow their designs. The weaving method required that the image be reversed, so Raphael also had to think out his schemes back to front. (The same approach is adopted by printmakers, so it’s not such an unusual proceeding.)