The Sacrifice at Lystra Tapestry

From February 24th until the first week of March, a team from Factum Foundation carried out the recording of one of the tapestries made after Raphael’s cartoon The Sacrifice at Lystra, on display at Palazzo Ducale in Mantua.

Made around 1550, the tapestry was woven from the original cartoons made by Raphael and his workshop for the tapestry cycle commissioned for the Sistine Chapel. As part of the efforts started by Isabella d’Este to have works from Raphael in Mantua, cardinal Enrico Gonzaga managed to acquire the tapestries some time after their creation, purchasing them directly from Brussels to decorate Mantua’s cathedral.

Recording the colour using panoramic composite photography © Factum Foundation

Gabriel Scarpa recording the colour using panoramic composite photography © Factum Foundation

The recording in Mantua, carried out using non-contact technologies such as close-range photogrammetry, 3D scanning and panoramic composite photography, took place as part of an ongoing cleaning and restoration process of the tapestry cycle. The documentation will serve to monitor the conservation state of the textiles, as well as to establish a direct comparison with its corresponding cartoon by analysing the shape and surface texture of the tapestry.

After the high-resolution recording in 3D, colour and infrared of the original Cartoons in 2019, the digital data was made public on the V&A’s website in February 2021. Factum Arte also produced an exact facsimile of the Sacrifice at Lystra cartoon for the exhibition ‘Raffaello (1520- 1483)’ at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, which celebrated the 500th anniversary of the painter’s death.

After the recording of The Sacrifice at Lystra in Mantua, we hope to establish connections and collaborations with all the other institutions currently owning the rest of the tapestries.