Christ's Charge to Peter

In 1515 Pope Leo the Tenth handed Raphael one of the great commissions of the age: designs for ten tapestries to hang along the lowest walls of the Sistine Chapel, directly beneath the ceiling Michelangelo had unveiled only three years earlier. This is one of the full-size drawings Raphael's workshop prepared for the weavers in Brussels. The scene shows the risen Christ, the wounds still on him, handing Peter charge of the flock. The sheep gathered at his feet stand for the future church, and the moment was read as the very root of the pope's authority. The woven tapestries were displayed in the chapel in 1519. The cartoons themselves were only working tools, so that seven of them survive at all, in London since 1865, is a small wonder.