dominusvenustas: Raphael, The cartoons for the Life of St Peter and St Paul tapestry series, Vatican
dominusvenustas:Raphael, The cartoons for the Life of St Peter and St Paul tapestry series, Vatican, 1515-17The Draught of Miraculous FishesStudent paintings from the cartoons in the V&AThe Cartoons in the V&A in LondonPaul preaching at AthensTwo marvellous examples of what genius Raphael was capable of. The painting of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo had just been completed a few years before and was being talked about all over Rome, Italy and beyond. Raphael’s tapestry designs would be hung on the lower wall of the Sistine Chapel, in direct competition with Michelangelo’s magnificent paintings above.Let the competition begin.He really showed his patron Pope Leo X his extraordinary talent and inventiveness. For the first time cartoons were done in colour! He did the first layer in charcoal then mixed his pigments with animal glue for the final top layer in colour. Genius. Absolute Genius. They became works of art in their own right. They were highly prized then just as they are today, hanging in all their glory in the V&A in London.This is a culmination of all he had learnt to that point, the genius of narrative drama. He had adopted the chiaroscuro of Leonardo, the anatomy and figure studies of Michelangelo and the figure types of the brilliant Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, Florence. He owed much to the Florentines – those who taught him important aspects of the revered ‘language of art’. Building on this and combining these elements, Raphael created grand visions of narration completely unprecedented.Antique aesthetic. Heroic figures. Eloquence of rhetoric. Gestural grandeur. Istoria. It is all there.Artists still draw from them today and learn from the Great Master, Raphael.N.B. A cartoon is a large preparatory drawing used to transfer the finished design to the intended surface of plaster for fresco or panel for painting or in this case for the Master Tapestry weavers in Brussels. -- source link
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