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The Raphael Cartoons are seven large cartoons for tapestries, belonging to the British Royal Collection but since 1865 on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, designed 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.〔''Raphael's Tapestries and Their Cartoons'', John White, John Shearman, ''The Art Bulletin'', Vol. 40, No. 3 (September 1958), pp. 193–221. Rather oddly, both Jones and Penny and Grove Art say, wrongly, that the V&A have eight of the ten cartoons.〕 Admiration of them reached its highest pitch in the 18th and 19th centuries; they were described as "the Parthenon sculptures of modern art".〔Quoted in Wölfflin, Heinrich; ''Classic Art; An Introduction to the Renaissance'', p. 108, 1952 in English (1968 edition), Phaidon, New York.〕 ==Commission and the tapestries== 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 retained their Late Gothic prestige during the Renaissance〔Thomas P. Campbell, Introduction, ''Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence'', Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2002 (exhibition catalogue), quoted (here )〕 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.〔Jones & Penny:135〕 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.〔(Raphael Cartoons; V&A website ) Accessed Nov 8, 2007〕 Although some colours have faded, they are in general in very good condition.〔Jones and Penny:133–135〕 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.〔''Right and Left in Raphael's Cartoons'' by A. Paul Oppe in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 7, 1944 (1944), pp. 82–94 analyses this aspect of the cartoons and tapestries〕 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.〔V&A website on the colouring. Wölfflin:108 believed they were entirely executed by Penni, one of Raphael's studio, but Jones and Penny and most writers now believe Raphael did much of the painting himself.〕 Some small preparatory drawings also survive: one for ''The Conversion of the Proconsul'' is also in the Royal Collection,〔Whitaker & Clayton: 82-3〕〔("The Art of Italy" in the Royal Collection )〕 and the Getty Museum in Malibu has a figure study of ''St Paul Rending His Garments''.〔(The Getty: 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;〔Eventually Henry's set ended up in Berlin, where it was destroyed by the RAF in World War II〕 King Francis 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.〔A good photo of ''The Miraculous Draught of Fishes'' (from a slightly later set of 1545–57 ) from the Metropolitan.〕 The borders included ornamentation in an imitation of Ancient Roman relief sculpture and carved porphyry. The tapestries were made with both gold and silver thread; some were later burnt by soldiers in the Sack of Rome in 1527 to extract the precious metals. The first delivery was in 1517, and seven were displayed in the Chapel for Christmas Day 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".〔Jones and Penny:142〕 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Raphael Cartoons」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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