V&A to display Raphael's Sistine tapestries
- August 17, 2010 11:39
To mark Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain next month, four glittering tapestries designed by Raphael for the Sistine Chapel will hang, for the first time ever, beside his original designs, or cartoons, in the Victoria & Albert museum.
Three years after Michelangelo finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling, in 1515, Pope Leo X ordered a set of sumptuous tapestries for the lower walls.
Now widely underappreciated, tapestry was, above all other art forms, the one that signalled princely magnificence in the 16th century. Raphael's 10 completed tapestries cost at least 16,000 ducats, at least five times what Michelangelo was paid for the ceiling.
![A 19th century Seven Piece "Chrysanthemum" Pattern Sterling Silver Coffee & Tea Service, which was exhibited in the Tiffany & Co. booth at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago](/images/c/78/96/Tiffany___Co__Makers_Seven_Piece_"Chrysanthem100x100_c.jpg "A 19th century Seven Piece \"Chrysanthemum\" Pattern Sterling Silver Coffee & Tea Service, which was exhibited in the Tiffany & Co. booth at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago")
_-Closing-the-Distance_100x100_c.jpg "Lot 204: Bob Kuhn (1920–2007),Closing the Distance, 1977, acrylic on masonite, 24 x 48 in, Sold: $409,500")
