The Raphael cartoons, now back on public view at the V&A, present a lost world of ideals. See them and marvel. By Andrew Graham-Dixon

"Cartoons are made thus," says Giorgio Vasari in The Lives of the Artists. "Sheets of paper, I mean square sheets, are fastened together with paste of flour and water cooked on the fire. They are then attached to the wall by this paste, which is spread two fingers' breadth all round on the side next to the wall, and are damped all over by sprinkling cold water on them. In this moist state they are stretched so that the creases are smoothed out in the drying. Then when they are dry the artist proceeds. . ."
 
Last Saturday the Raphael cartoons - once described with characteristic gusto by the 19th-century painter and polemicist Benjamin Robert Haydon as the greatest paintings in the world - were put back on public display at the Victoria and Albert Museum. These reputedly fragile works on paper have spent more than four years in the obscurity of the conservation department.  The customary heated debate about the role of the art restorer in the late 20th century seems, however, unlikely to ensue. This is because, apart from a few small running repairs, the paintings have not actually been restored. They have merely been monitored. Various diagnostic techniques have been employed. X-rays have been taken which prove, among other things, that Raphael did indeed, as Vasari suggested, paint the cartoons in an upright position rather than - as some had hypothesised - crouching over them like Jackson Pollock at work on an Action Painting. But no major operation has been deemed necessary and the condition of the pictures has been declared stable.
 
Four years may seem, to some, rather a long...

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