RAFFAELLO Sanzio
(b. 1483, Urbino, d. 1520, Roma)

Healing of the Lame Man

1515-16
Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas, 340 x 540 cm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Raphael's cartoons are the earliest surviving examples of tapestry cartoons on paper, it took Raphael and his workshop a little more than a year to complete the ten cartoons commissioned by Pope Leo X Medici for the tapestries of the Sistine Chapel. The cost for Raphael's cartoons and the weaving of the ten tapestries was 16.000 ducats, more than five times the amount paid to Michelangelo for painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling.