A Papal Procession

A photograph of a drawing attributed to Raphael (c.1520) now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (inv. no.1.1.r.12). The drawing connects with sheets now in the Louvre (inv. no.3874) and in Stockholm (inv. no.329), and with a finished modello in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no.1948), usually described as discarded designs by Giulio Romano for the Costantine cycle in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican. Whether Raphael had this destination in mind when he executed the drawing now in Boston is ongoing matter of debate. Ruland (1876) associated the drawing with Raphael's fresco of 'The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple', executed in 1511-12 in the Stanza di Eliodoro in the Vatican.