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The frescoes in the Vatican Palace commissioned by Popes Julius II and Leo X

Charles Thurston Thompson (1816-68)

A study for the Disputa c.1853-76

Albumen print | 27.8 x 28.3 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 852394

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A photograph of a drawing by Raphael (c.1509) currently in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (RCIN 912732). The drawing is a preliminary study for the left half of the Disputa (The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament), painted by Raphael around 1508-09 in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican.

The decoration of Pope Julius II’s library in the Vatican Palace, a room now known as the Stanza della Segnatura, was Raphael's first major undertaking in Rome. The so-called Disputa was probably the first of the large frescoes painted by Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura.

Thirty sheets of studies survive for this fresco and the one catalogued here is the earliest surviving one. This drawing is laid out in a very similar way to the final fresco, with the exception of the role played by the architecture. See RCIN 912733 for a drawing by Raphael which represents a successive stage towards the definition of the pictorial programme of the fresco.
  • Creator(s)

    Charles Thurston Thompson (1816-68) (photographer)

    After Raphael (Urbino 1483-Rome 1520) (artist)

  • 27.8 x 28.3 cm (sheet of paper)

  • Acquired for the Prince Consort's Raphael Collection (c.1853-76)

  • Object type(s)
      • visual works
        • photographs
    Subject(s)
    • Places
      • Europe
        • Italy
          • Lazio [Italy]
            • Rome [Lazio]
              • Vatican City [Rome]
                • Vatican Palace [Vatican City]
                  • Stanza della Segnatura [Vatican Palace]
                    • Vatican-Stanza della Segnatura-Disputa
  • Other number(s)

    Ruland p.180 B.69

    Bibliographic reference(s)

    Joannides 1983 : Joannides, P., 1983. The Drawings of Raphael, with a complete catalogue, Oxford p.181, no.197

    Clayton 1999 : Clayton, M. Raphael and his Circle. Drawings from Windsor Castle, London pp.68-72, no.16

    Jacoby/Sonnabend 2012: edited by J. Jacoby and M. Sonnabend, Frankfurt/Main 2012 pp.131-3, no.15

    P&W : Popham, A.E. & Wilde, J., 1949. The Italian Drawings of the XV and XVI Centuries in the Collection of His Majesty The King at Windsor Castle, London no. 794