The Death of Ananias

This is not really a finished painting but a full-size design, made about 1515 so that weavers in Brussels could copy it into a tapestry. Pope Leo X had ordered a set of them for the Sistine Chapel, to hang along the lower walls beneath Michelangelo's ceiling, and Raphael drew the scenes. Here Saint Peter has just accused a man named Ananias of lying about money he had promised the early Church, and Ananias drops dead on the spot as the apostles look on. Raphael worked it in glue-based colour on sheets of paper pasted together, big enough for weavers to trace. The tapestries went to Rome, while seven of the paper cartoons survive, lent for generations now to a London museum by the Royal Collection.