The Vatican Tapestries

Waldemar Januszczak, The Sunday Times’ art critic has become very excited at the Pope’s lending four tapestries from the Vatican to be exhibited beside Raphael’s original cartoons. Januszczak even joked that we may risk eternal damnation if we do not go to see them. I am afraid (well not really afraid) that I’ll be risking hell’s fires. Certainly, the tapestries which use gold and silver threads in parts, were very expensive productions, requiring the skills of many weavers over an extended period. But when were man hours an indicator of aesthetic value? After all, Greek sculptors were paid more for a relatively short piece of egg and dart frieze than for complete figures. The pricy threads are only a reminder of the sybaritic lifestyles of Renaissance popes.

In fact, the tapestries are a dreadful travesty of Raphael’s work. The weavers took terrible liberties with them. Accustomed to works where every inch of the surface was covered with intricate designs, they introduced inappropriate detail. The worst example is in Christ’s Charge to St Peter, where Christ’s robe is covered with gold stars. It is as if the Son of God had breakfasted on a dozen or so runny eggs and dribbled them all over his attire. In other tapestries colours were altered upsetting the balance of the compositions. Generally the orchestration of the works is destroyed and Raphael’s powerful compositions are further diminished by the addition of broad, narrative borders of indifferent design.

Raphael was unfortunate that his major mural commission to decorate the papal apartments meant that he had to work with awkward spaces. He did this with great ingenuity, but even his School of Athens, painted on a great vaulted area, forced on him a symmetrical composition. Designing the tapestries, he had no such constraints and could give full scope to his genius. The cartoons are undoubtedly his greatest works. We are fortunate that we can see them at any time as they are on permanent loan from the Queen to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Turning High Renaissance paintings into tapestries wasn’t really a good idea. Anyone wanting to see tapestries that are great works of art in themselves, should seek out the mediaeval millefleurs pieces. The Lady with the Unicorn in Paris, the Tapestries of the Apocalypse, Angers, The Winged Stags, Rouen would do for a start.