Raphael and his studio created ten cartoons for a series of tapestries commonly called the Acts of the Apostles. In 1623, seven of these cartoons entered the Royal Collection when they were purchased by the future Charles I. They are currently on long-term loan from the Royal Collection to the Victoria & Albert Museum. 

The original tapestries, which were modelled on the cartoons, are housed in the Vatican Museums. Three of Raphael’s preparatory studies for the cartoons are also in the Royal Collection.

Commission by Pope Leo X

Soon after his election in March 1513, Pope Leo X commissioned Raphael to design a set of tapestries for the Sistine Chapel. They would show scenes from the Acts of the Apostles and hang below Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes, which had been completed the previous year. 

The tapestries were to be woven in the workshop of Pieter van Aelst in Brussels. In 1515 and 1516, Raphael and his studio painted ten full-scale ‘cartoons’ to serve as models for the weavers. The word ‘cartoon’ comes from the Italian, ‘cartone’ meaning ‘large sheet of paper’. It refers to a full-scale preparatory drawing, which would be used to transfer the design to larger surfaces – in this case, to a woven textile. They typically feature detailed outlines and colour schemes to help artists visualise the final piece. 

The cartoons were painted in a thick gouache - a type of opaque water-based paint - on many sheets of paper, overlapped and pasted together. Raphael devoted great care to the execution of the cartoons, and an unusually large proportion of the painting seems to be in the master’s own hand.

The cartoons were sent to Flanders and cut into vertical strips a metre or so wide for easier handling, and by July 1517, the weaving of the tapestries had begun. As tapestries are woven from the back, the compositions of the tapestries are reversed with respect to the cartoons. Seven of the tapestries were delivered to Rome in time for their exhibition in the Sistine Chapel on 26 December 1519 (Saint Stephen's Day). The remaining three were delivered during the next two years, as an inventory of Leo’s tapestries compiled on his death in December 1521, features all ten. 

Journey to England

After the delivery of the tapestries to Rome, the whereabouts of the cartoons remain unknown for nearly a century. It is likely that all but one of the original cartoons remained in Flanders, where further sets of tapestries were woven from them over the next few years. By the early 17th century, seven of the cartoons – still in strips – had found their way to Genoa, in the north-west of Italy. On 28 March 1623, Charles I (then Prince of Wales) wrote from Madrid to request that money be put aside for

certain patterns to be brought out of Italy, and sent to us in England for the making thereby a Suite of Tapestry, which drawings ... are to cost near upon the point of seven hundred pounds

Prince Charles, future King Charles I

The cartoons were bought primarily to serve as models for the tapestry factory established by James I in 1619, at Mortlake in south-west London. Over the next two decades, several partial sets of the Acts of the Apostles were woven.

The purely artistic (rather than functional) value of the cartoons was not fully exploited until the end of the 17th century, when William III ordered that the strips be reintegrated. The cartoons were then hung in a gallery at Hampton Court Palace designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Apart from a period at Buckingham House in the 1760s, and occasional public exhibition in London, the cartoons remained at Hampton Court until 1865, when they were placed on loan at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum).