Notre série de boards 'Music' est disponible. La liste des shops où la trouver sur www.magentaskateboards.com Our 'Music' board series is now available. Ask for it at your local skateshop! Leo Valls Gramophone model: 8' x 31,5'

• published: 05 Sep 2010
• views: 7913

In this special film, Dr Mark Evans, Senior Curator of Paintings at the V&A; visits the V&A; and Windsor Castle to reveal how Raphael made the cartoons which were used to make tapestries by specialist weavers in Brussels and how they come to be at the V&A.; Meanwhile, in Rome, Vatican Museum Curator, Professor Arnold Nesselrath explains how Raphael applied his 'universal genius' to sculpture, architecture and tapestry as well as painting. Mark Evans: I never thought it could happen. Of course, it' s really been dependent on this gift, if you like, from the Pope. The Raphael Cartoons are the greatst cycle of High Renaissance painting north of the Alps. There's simply nothing like them in England or indeed anywhere else, except Rome itself. The Raphael Cartoons were design drawings. They were made of a mosaic of hundreds of sheets of paper glued together which was then fixed to the wall. And Raphael and his assitants painted them in situ. They would then have been rolled for transport to Brussels to Pietr Van Aelst's studio where they would have been cut into metre wide strips for use by the tapestry weaves. The cartoons were brought to England by Charles I. He paid £300 in 1623. He bought them as designs for tapestries. It was at the end of the 17th century that they were framed up as paintings in their own right. Queen Victoria lent them to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1865 and they've been here ever since. The Vatican Rome June 2010 Arnold Nesselrath: Vasari called Raphael 'I grand univerale' the universal genius. Raphael did everything he was asked to do from painting to architecture and tapestries - the Vatican had a huge tapestry collection,and to design them was nothing unsual for Raphael. I thought bringing the Tapestries to the Cartoons was just a perfect set up. I think it' s going to be really a European event on European art that has been created from Rome to Brussels, and has been shown in London. The Print Room, Windsor Castle Mark Evans: People tended to think of Raphael as being in the similar personality to Mozart. That, you know, drawing was a very fluent, easy, natural process for him. It's rather humbling when you move from these colossal machines - the Cartoons, five metres wide - to these eloquent little sheets of paper. Dr Martin Clayon: Especially in the Christ Charge to Peter where you see the drawing done from live studio models. And this sense of freshness of observation is still present in this drawing; 500 years ago these figures were standing before Raphael in the studio and he drew them in their every day clothes Mark Evans: You can imagine his saying, you know, 'Move along a bit, you stand there, you put your hand forward, bend forward' . And that's precisely the ideas are coming together actually on the sheet. To simplify, it is, sort of, one, two, three steps and then here we've got virtually the scene that could be signed off by the patron. You know, 'This is what you're going to get' . The Vatican Arnold Nesselrath: There are two great things about these tapestries. The one is that they've found the greatest weavers you can imagine in Brussels who could translate Raphael's painting into tapestries and the other idea is that their art is so convincing that the most contrasting sovereigns (if you imagine Henry VII, Louis XIV in France, Charles V in Vienna), they all wanted these tapestries. They are what Vasari says a 'universal art'. The Vatican Tapestry Conservation Studio Arnold Nesselrath: Leo X's favourite painter was Raphael and he was prepared to pay five times the amount of money that Michelangelo's ceiling had cost. You get a very good idea as to how these tapestries were made because the cartoons were cut into strips … if you imagine! - cut up a Raphael painting! But this gives you an idea [that] you can only work on a certain sections of a tapestry. So when they were woven, the people were sitting like the restorers now and they produced the tapestry in this way, and that' s the reason why they had to cut up the Cartoons. The Raphael Gallery Mark Evans: Raphael was a great fluid draughtsman. He was also a brilliant storyteller. They were exemplary works that artists used to school their own drawing upon. But also to learn how to tell a story. In the Miraculous Draught of Fishes we see the muscular figures of the fisherman leaning to haul out from the sea their nets bursting with fish. Astounded by this miracle, Peter falls on his knees before Christ who raises one hand in blessing. Behind him comes St Andrew. It's as if the two figures of Andrew and Peter are acting two stages in a single action. It's quite cinematographic. The Vatican Tapestry Conservation Studio Arnold Nesselrath: What we do now is of course checking all the fixings that have been done over the centuries. It is of course a great chance to see the quality. How they paint with the threads. It is one thing to have the various colours of the single threads but it's also

• published: 08 Sep 2010
• views: 5645