Raphael Cartoons - Subjects

Subjects

The Raphael Cartoons represent scenes from the lives of Saints Peter and Paul. The programme emphasised a number of points relevant to contemporary controversies in the period just before the Reformation, but especially the entrusting of the Church to Saint Peter, the founder of the Papacy. There were relatively few precedents for these subjects, so Raphael was less constrained by traditional iconographic expectations than he would have been with a series on the life of Christ or Mary. He no doubt received some advice or instructions in choosing the scenes to depict. The scenes from the Life of Peter were designed to hang below the frescoes of the Life of Christ by Perugino and others in the middle register of the Chapel; opposite them, the Life of Saint Paul was to hang below the Life of Moses in fresco. An intervening small frieze showed subjects from the life of Leo, also designed to complement the other series. Each sequence begins at the altar wall, with the Life of Peter on the right side of the Chapel and Life of Paul on the left. Including the three subjects with no surviving cartoons, the set contains (the full scriptural quotations and a commentary are on the V&A website):

Life of Peter

• The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (John 21: 1-14)
• Christ's Charge to Peter (Matthew 16:16-19) The key moment from the Gospels for the claims of the Papacy.
• The Healing of the Lame Man (Acts 3:1-8)
• The Death of Ananias (Acts 5:1-10).

Life of Paul

• The Stoning of St Stephen (no cartoon) at which Paul (Saul) was present before his conversion.
• The Conversion of Saint Paul (no cartoon)
• The Conversion of the Proconsul or The Blinding of Elymas (Acts 13:6-12). Paul has been invited to preach to the Roman proconsul of Paphos, Sergius Paulus, but is heckled by Elymas, a "magus", who Paul miraculously causes to go temporarily blind, thus converting the proconsul.
• The Sacrifice at Lystra (Acts 14:8). After Paul miraculously cures a cripple, the people of Lystra see him and his companion Barnabas (both standing left) as gods, and want to make a sacrifice to them. Paul tears his garments in disgust, whilst Barnabas speaks to the crowd, persuading the young man at centre to restrain the man with the sacrificial ax.
• St Paul in prison (no cartoon), smaller than the others.
• St Paul Preaching in Athens (Acts 17:16-34), the figure standing at the left in a red cap is a portrait of Leo; next to him is Janus Lascaris, a Greek scholar in Rome. The kneeling couple at the right were probably added by Giulio Romano, then an assistant to Raphael.