Letter XXI.

THE CARTOONS.

371

later works of art. Leo X. now conceived the idea of perfecting
the artistic decoration of this chapel, and in a manner alike
beseeming his love of art and his love of splendour. According
to an ancient Church custom, the lower portion of the walls of the
edifice was, on grand festivals, covered wTith tapestry. The Holy
Father, therefore, gave Raphael the commission to execute coloured
cartoons for ten tapestries, intended to adorn the lower portion of
the walls of the Presbytery, or that space where the service is
performed and where the clergy sit.* The selection of the sub-
jects for these cartoons is also in the highest degree ingenious,
from their connection with the subjects by the earlier painters which
represent in the advent of the Saviour the work of Redemption
and the founding of the New Covenant. By the principal events
from the lives of the two chief Apostles, Peter and Paul, is repre-
sented the spread of Christianity; in the Death of St. Stephen,
the first martyr of the Church, is exemplified the triumph of a
Christian's faith. To these was afterwards added an eleventh
cartoon, for a tapestry intended to adorn the altar. The subject
here chosen was the Coronation of the Virgin, with the represen-
tation of the Holy Trinity.

From various circumstances it appears probable that the com-
mission for this eleventh cartoon was given about the middle of
the year 1514. There is, for instance, in many parts, a remark-
able correspondence in the treatment of the forms with the above-
mentioned picture of the retreat of Attila, which was completed
in the year 1514; leaving us to infer that the execution of the
two works was nearly contemporary; again, the notice entered
in the account-books of St. Peter's shows that Raphael had, on
the 15th of June, 1515, received the sum of 300 ducats on
account of these cartoons, at which period the principal portion
of the work was probably completed ; since the remainder of the
amount due to him, December 20th, 1516, according to a similar
notice, amounted only to 134 ducats. When we consider, more-
over, the numerous other works upon which Raphael was engaged

* The merit belongs to the Chevalier Bunsen, Prussian Minister at the English
Court, of having accurately determined this by settling the measurements in the
Presbytery. The spaces occupied by the Pope's throne on one side, and by the
choristers' gallery on the other, which break the walls, account for the different
widths of the cartoons. See also, on this subject, a note by the editor of the English
translation of Kugler's Handbook of the Italian Schools of Painting, p. 393.

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