London
On 19 October, the V&A reopens its Raphael Court, which has been closed for four years. It has cost £2 million to repair the roof, provide a better setting and better environmental conditions for the seven great Raphael cartoons.
These are large-scale paper designs painted by Raphael in 1515-16 for the Acts of the Apostles tapestry series woven for Pope Leo X’s Sistine chapel. Seven of the cartoons were acquired by Charles I in 1623 and shipped to England, where a number of sets of tapestries were made from them in the royal Mortlake tapestry workshop. One of these is now on display in the Court, on loan from the Duke of Buccleuch.
The cartoons were exempted from sale by the Commonwealth, possibly because of their distinguished provenance, but it was only at the end of the seventeenth century that they began to be considered as works of art.
In the 1690s, William III built a splendid gallery in which to display them at Hampton Court, called the “Cartoon Gallery”, where they were admired until their transferral to Buckingham Palace in 1763. Queen Victoria lent them to the V&A in 1865 and they have been on show there ever since.
Previously rather reminiscent of an old-fashioned municipal swimming pool, the vast, top-lit Court has been revealed in its original proportions by unblocking an apse at one end, into which the director Alan Borg has placed a huge, late gothic, Spanish altarpiece to contrast its grisly martyrdoms with Raphael’s serene and monumental creations. Acres of black lino flooring have been taken up to expose the mosaic floor and a subtle new lighting system has been installed by the famous Washington-based specialists, George Sexton Associates. This illuminates the paintings with a conservation-approved seventy lux and washes the surrounding walls with forty lux, therebye softening and varying the cold, grey glare from the skylights.
The project has given conservators the opportunity to analyse each cartoon, and to consolidate loose areas of paper. This was done on a giant easel adapted from an elephant’s operating table. Surprisingly, despite their 450-year history, little conservation work was required. The re-opening of the gallery coincides with the publication of The Raphael tapestry cartoons: narrative, decoration and design by Sharon Fermor, publishers Philip Wilson Ltd.
Coincidentally, an exhibition is on show at Columbia University, New York, from 16 October to 21 December entitled “Apostles in England: Sir James Thornhill and the legacy of Raphael’s tapestry cartoons”; this includes seven paintings by Thornhill and examines the legacy of the Acts of the Apostles cartoons in painted and engraved copies.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as ‘Peanuts this ain’t'
