Study for the 'Disputa'

A photograph of a drawing by Raphael (c.1508-09) now in the British Museum, London (1900,0824.108). The drawing is a compositional study for the lower left-hand group in the Disputa (The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament), painted by Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican between 1508 and 1511. Ruland (1876) catalogued the drawing as being then in the collection of Henry Gasc, Paris. Copies of the drawing survive in the Louvre (inv. no.3974) and in the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest (inv. no.F(1898)137). A closely related study by Raphael (differing from the British Museum sheet in details and scale of figures) may have once existed, as suggested by two copies currently in the Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth House (inv. no.58a; see RCIN 852434) and in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no.3884v; see 852437).