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The subjects of the cartoons in the seven which have been saved, are 'The Death of Ananias, 'Elymas the Sorcerer struck with Blindness, 'The Healing of the Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, 'The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 'Paul and Barnabas at Lystra, 'St Paul Preaching at Athens, and 'The Charge to St Peter. The four cartoons which are lost, were 'The Stoning of St Stephen, 'The Conversion of St Paul, 'Paul in Prison, and 'The Coronation of the Virgin.
After his death there were found in his house many designs, cartoons, and models in clay, all very beautiful, and a picture of Our Lady executed by him excellently well and in a lovely manner, to all appearance many years before, which was sold by his heirs to Piero Salviati.
This done, he painted some large figures on that part of the walls where there is the Birth of Venus, but after the cartoons of Vasari, and many little figures in a landscape, which were executed very well. In like manner, on the wall where there are the Loves as tiny little children, fashioning the arrows of Cupid, he painted the three Cyclopes forging thunderbolts for Jove.
And it does not seem to me right that he who sits in his work-room drawing cartoons, in order afterwards to reproduce in great works such a variety of things in perspective, should be paid for the labour of his nights and perhaps for the work of many weeks into the bargain on the same scale as are paid the days of those who have to undergo no fatigue of the mind and hand, and little of the body, it being enough for them to imitate, without in any way racking their brains, as Aristotile has done.
It conveyed truthful information, though in a form that hurt, as cartoons usually do, and it roused a healthy sentiment against a very malignant evil in the Church and in the body politic. If the Popes would keep out of politics, they and their followers would enjoy more quiet nerves.
The wrong matter here was primarily the cartoons, which were of the poorest. No artist controlled them, and the workers strayed far from the copy set long before. Added to that, the wool was of coarse, harsh quality and the dyeing was badly done. All three faults remediable, thought the two chief forces in the kingdom.
When Raffaello had finished all the cartoons of the tapestries for the Papal Chapel, which were afterwards woven in silk and gold, with stories of S. Paul, S. Peter, and S. Stephen, Marc' Antonio engraved the Preaching of S. Paul, the Stoning of S. Stephen, and the Blind Man receiving his Sight; which plates, what with the invention of Raffaello, the grace of the design, and the diligent engraving of Marc' Antonio, were so beautiful, that there was nothing better to be seen.
We only hear now and then an interested allusion, a suggestion that this or that beautiful specimen of work has come from his atelier. Cartoons at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century were not all divided into their different scenes by Gothic column and arch.
Worse still, these papers instilled into their readers the firm conviction that these crimes were an essential part of German propaganda, and in their cartoons represented the German, more particularly the German-American, as a bearded anarchist with a bomb ready in his hand.
Michael Angelo, after making designs for this commission, told the Pope he thought the roof would look poor, because the Apostles were poor folk "perchè furon poveri anche loro." He then began his cartoons for the vault as it now exists. See the letter to Ser Giovan Francesco Fattucci, in the Archivio Buonarroti, Milanesi, pp. 426-427.
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