Raphael Cartoons
cartoons for tapestries by Raphael
The Raphael Cartoons are seven large modello paintings on paper, designs for tapestries, surviving from a set of ten cartoons, by the High Renaissance painter Raphael in 1515–1516. They were sent from Rome to the weavers in Brussels, who cut them into wide strips and had them beside their looms. The set of tapestries was commissioned by Pope Leo X for the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Palace in Rome, showing scenes from the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. They are still hung on special occasions 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 Cartoons” enters the record as cartoons for tapestries by Raphael. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Raphael, Cartoons and cartoons can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q936852. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1515, 1516 and 1865.
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This entry incorporates text from “Raphael Cartoons” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.