Raphael Cartoons (37114755635)

This photograph captures a large, vaulted museum hall containing two of Raphael’s monumental preparatory cartoons for the Sistine Chapel tapestries. At the end of the gallery stands the towering, gilded Altarpiece of Saint George, an elaborate 15th-century Spanish polyptych. Two visitors stand in the foreground, providing a scale for the immense size of these Renaissance and Gothic artworks.

Raphael’s cartoons represent the zenith of High Renaissance narrative design, commissioned by Pope Leo X during a period of intense fusion between Christian theology and Neoplatonic philosophy. While depicting apostolic lives, the works reflect the idealized humanism and formal harmony championed by the Roman Academy and the Neoplatonic thinkers of the era.