I

Studies of English artistic culture of the first half of the eighteenth century have emphasized the growth of interest in painting. This is seen as having been reflected both in the rise of a picture market and in a process of cultural transformation, in which taste for painting came to serve as a mark of social distinction as well as a source of cohesion among the upper ranks of English society.Footnote ¹ Whilst more attention has been given to the formation of taste and visual culture,Footnote ² less has been written about changes in ideas about painting other than to suggest that these embodied specific political ideologies constructed upon the discourses of ‘civic humanism’ and ‘politeness’.Footnote ³ Moreover, it remains unclear by what process art-historical consciousness came into existence. The rise of art-historical consciousness is, however, an important subject. It was associated with a rise of interest in artistic standards, crucial to establishing the value of painting and to promoting its status both intellectually and socially. The rise of this consciousness also encouraged a historical understanding of painting in a European context.Footnote ⁴

In this process, a vital part was played by the publishing of painting, both in print form and in critical and historical texts. The growth of such publications in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries reflected new attempts not only to search for artistic standards, but also to communicate such standards to wider audiences so as to achieve consensus on pictorial values. Publications relating to the Raphael Cartoons then at Hampton Court represent an important case study. The publishing of the Cartoons signalled the arrival of a new era, in terms of advances in reproductive printmaking, which in turn made possible the development of public knowledge of celebrated works of art. This was also a key moment in the progress of art-critical writing and in the forging of an artistic canon that was to remain influential throughout most of the rest of the eighteenth century.

To focus on work by a non-English artist in order to account for the development of art-historical consciousness in England may initially seem incongruous. This is, however, one of the main arguments of this article: the formation of art-historical consciousness in early eighteenth-century England was primarily stimulated and shaped by engagement not with English art, but with continental ‘Old Master’ paintings and associated discourses.Footnote ⁵ Before writers and painters became preoccupied with defining the ‘Englishness’ of English painting in the later part of the century, it was the artistic excellence and ideas manifested in celebrated works of continental painters and the benefits that might flow from introducing them into an English context that first concentrated the attention of certain Englishmen who aimed to enhance the status of painting in England. Their efforts to absorb and introduce up-to-date continental artistic ideas helped to create a framework for understanding the function and advocating the importance of painting in English society. To understand and explain the shaping of artistic culture in eighteenth-century England, it is therefore crucial to incorporate contemporary perceptions of European Old Masters and their influence on notions of painting. This article provides one such study by considering the case of the Raphael Cartoons in relation to the rise of art-historical consciousness.Footnote ⁶

Why Raphael and his Cartoons, rather than other Old Masters, led this development is a central question of this article. The reasons may be summarized in two respects: the actual state of publication relating to Old Masters and Raphael's canonical status in academic discourse. By the first decade of the eighteenth century, only a very few Old Masters in English collections – notably Titian, Correggio, Parmigianino, Carracci, Guido Reni, Carlo Maratta, and Luca Giordano, as well as some Dutch and Flemish painters – had been published, mostly in mezzotint, a newly invented technique and a cheaper alternative to line engraving.Footnote ⁷ The publication of these mezzotints by professional print publishers such as John Smith (1652–1743) and Edward Cooper (d. 1725), however, aimed more to glorify the owners of the originals than to draw public attention to the particular merit of a painter and to his potential to contribute to the development of artistic ideas in England.Footnote ⁸ By contrast, projects to reproduce Raphael's Cartoons were undertaken in an enthusiastic effort to promote someone claimed to be an exemplary artist to wider audiences.Footnote ⁹ Moreover, the Raphael Cartoons inspired the production of a considerable number of written commentaries, which occupied a prominent place in contemporary published texts relating to painting. In these ways, the Cartoons and their reproductions acquired a significance and influence far greater than other pictures in the formation of artistic ideas.

This is not to say that there was no intention of glorifying the owner of the Cartoons. On the contrary, the story of the royal acquisition of the Cartoons and their installation at Hampton Court provided part of the impetus for their publication and was frequently noted on a prefixed title plate. The Cartoons were originally commissioned by Pope Leo X in 1515, to be used as full-scale designs for a set of tapestries to hang in the Sistine Chapel. In 1623, Charles I, then prince of Wales, purchased seven of the ten original Cartoons, with the intention of putting them to use at the Mortlake tapestry manufactory. For a period they were stored in boxes and it was not until 1699 that William III had the Cartoons restored and hung at Hampton Court, in a gallery designed by Sir Christopher Wren specifically for their display.Footnote ¹⁰ At this point, the status of the Cartoons changed significantly. Their value shifted from the functional to the aesthetic, as they were displayed as autonomous works manifesting their own merits, and not merely as preparatory designs for some other more precious artefacts. Their value was, however, also highly symbolic. Both the fame of Raphael and the status of the English crown as the owner enhanced their value, as was revealed in 1724 in an interesting commentary by Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) on the valuation of art:

In Mandeville's view, the value bestowed on the Cartoons thus provided, ironically, an example against the idea of intrinsic worth in things, reflecting instead the particular prejudices of the art market. Some Englishmen, however, tried to secure the artistic value of the Cartoons on the basis of theory, and promoted the merit of the Cartoons as a universal standard.

Admiration for Raphael was not unique to England. Raphael's fame had already been established in the mid-sixteenth century by Giorgio Vasari in his Vite (Florence, 1550; 1568), in which Raphael was deemed to represent the highest achievement since the ‘rebirth’ of painting. Raphael's supreme status in academic discourse was further consolidated in the French Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in the second half of the seventeenth century,Footnote ¹² and his reputation was spread to England by the last decades of the seventeenth century. William Aglionby's Painting illustrated in three diallogues (1685), which provided English readers with an accessible version of current continental art-historical thinking, included a life of Raphael taken from Vasari's Vite. In A short account of the most eminent painters, both ancient and modern (1695), Richard Graham stated that Raphael was acknowledged ‘by the general consent of Mankind’ to have been ‘the Prince of the Modern Painters’.Footnote ¹³ Moreover, around 1700 a rapid sequence of publications of art treatises translated from French works by Roland Fréart, Du Fresnoy, Pierre Monier, André Félibien, and Roger de Piles helped inform English audiences about continental academic theories and art-historical narratives. The canonical status of Raphael in continental academic discourse was thus easily perceptible to English artists and art lovers, or even general readers. In the first half of the eighteenth century when English artists strove to found a public academy which would help to bring them on a par with their continental (especially French) counterparts, the Raphael Cartoons at Hampton Court were viewed as a valuable native resource, enabling English artists to claim their advantageous position to be heir to the great Old Master.Footnote ¹⁴

In terms of the diffusion of images, Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican and other palaces had been published in Rome; his works in the French royal collection had been engraved and included in the Tableaux du cabinet du roi (1679). These prints were avidly sought by English art lovers and formed part of serious print collections, such as that which survives in Worcester College, Oxford, bequeathed by George Clarke (1661–1736), an amateur architect and fellow of All Souls, Oxford.Footnote ¹⁵ In this context, it is not difficult to imagine the interest that the Cartoons, the largest works of Raphael's mature years to be found outside Italy, aroused when they were displayed at Hampton Court. For those already familiar with Raphael's artistic status through written accounts or prints, the ‘rediscovery’ of the Cartoons in an English royal palace must have been exciting. It was soon argued not only that the Cartoons deserved to be known to the world for their artistic value, but also that they effectively demonstrated the nation's cultural standing. Publicizing the Cartoons to the world, therefore, became a means to fulfil a cultural ambition. With the diffusion of knowledge of this exemplary painter and, in particular, his Cartoons, the English public came not only to be aware of an artistic treasure and of artistic standards in terms of which he was held to excel, but they were also encouraged to consider the pattern of European art-historical development, in which England's part was yet to be determined.

II

It is essential to take into account the publication of prints in order to understand the impact of particular works of art on society at large in this period.Footnote ¹⁶ The expansion of the art world from one consisting only of aristocratic patron-collectors to one gradually including a more general art public relied not only upon the mechanism of the art market and, at a later date, of public exhibitions, but also upon the use of the print as a cheaper and multipliable alternative. From the early eighteenth century, reproductive prints were increasingly appreciated: they constituted an essential medium for disseminating images of paintings to wider audiences. Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729) made an interesting analogy when he wrote an article to promote the publishing of the Raphael Cartoons in the Spectator of 1711, claiming that ‘an Engraver is to the Painter what a Printer is to an Author’.Footnote ¹⁷ This same view of the function of the print – and the role of the engraver – was expressed again in A conference between a painter and an engraver (1736), in which the Engraver – though lower in the artistic hierarchy than painters – proudly proclaimed ‘the great Honour we do your Paintings, in publishing them to all the world’.Footnote ¹⁸ Prints were indeed the most effective and widely available medium for publicizing images of the Cartoons to audiences beyond those able to see the originals or to have copies in tapestry or in oils.

The first attempt to have the Cartoons engravedFootnote ¹⁹ was encouraged, and possibly initiated, by George Clarke himself. His serious interest in Raphael is revealed by the great number of prints he acquired after Raphael and the place assigned to them in the organization of his collection. Naturally Clarke would not have missed the Cartoons. He bought his younger friend, Charles Jervas's (1675–1739) drawings of the Cartoons made in early 1698 and sponsored the latter's trip to Italy.Footnote ²⁰ It is likely that, at Clarke's suggestion, Jervas approached Girard Audran (1640–1703) when he stopped in Paris en route, engaging Audran to undertake the work of engraving the Cartoons. Audran had been recognized as a leading engraver since he completed five large engravings of The battles of Alexander the Great (1672–8) after a series of monumental canvases painted by Charles Le Brun (1619–90) for the French king, Louis XIV. This set of prints enjoyed great international success.Footnote ²¹ The project of engraving the Raphael Cartoons, if completed, would have brought the Cartoons to an international audience. Audran, however, produced only two prints,Footnote ²² and the project was first forced to cease by the outbreak of war and, subsequently, by Audran's death in 1703.Footnote ²³

Four years later, in 1707, the first complete set of engravings after Raphael's Cartoons appeared in England. Their publication was accompanied by a newspaper advertisement, the first in an English newspaper to publicize newly engraved prints after Old Master history paintings rather than maps or portraits.Footnote ²⁴The London Gazette of 15–19 May 1707 announced: ‘The seven cartons of Raphael d'Urbin, drawn and engraved from the Originals in the Gallery at Hampton Court, by S. Gribelin, are sold by Charles Mather, near Temple Bar in Fleet-street; and by the said Gribelin, in Longacre, the Corner-House of Banbury Court. Price 15 s.’Footnote ²⁵ According to George Vertue (1684–1756), the diligent historiographer of English art, Gribelin's set of prints ‘sold mightily, whereby he Reap'd a good profitt, and made his fortune easy especially they having not been compleatly gravd before’.Footnote ²⁶ Line engraving, in Vertue's words, was ‘at a very low ebb’ in England in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.Footnote ²⁷ It was possibly this situation that made Charles Jervas go for Audran in Paris, then achieving fame as a centre for line engraving, where the production of the Cabinet du roi involved a number of skilful engravers, many of whom were received as members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. In London, Simon Gribelin's publication of his set of Cartoon engravings can be seen to have signalled the beginning of changes not only in print production and marketing patterns, but also in attitudes towards Old Master history paintings and their potential function. These changes would have a great impact on the English art world, artistically as well as commercially.

Simon Gribelin (1661–1733), a Huguenot from a family of watchmakers and engravers, moved to London around 1680. He produced books of prints of ornamental designs intended as sources for jewellers, watchmakers and other craftsmen, and was also active as a book illustrator.Footnote ²⁸ In 1693, Gribelin first demonstrated his ability as a history engraver with The tent of Darius after the French academician Charles Le Brun's painting Alexander and the family of Darius. As Vertue pointed out, Gribelin in fact copied Gérard Édelinck's engraving after Le Brun rather than the original painting, which was then at Versailles. Still, this print ‘was much taken notice of’.Footnote ²⁹ Although we do not know precisely what motivated Gribelin to engrave and publish the Raphael Cartoons in 1707, his early training in France may well have been significant where history painting was much esteemed in academic theory and practice and, more particularly, Raphael was regarded as the model to which both painters and engravers should aspire. He probably obtained permission, if not patronage, from Queen Anne for reproducing the Cartoons, which would account for his set of the Cartoon prints produced with a title-page carrying a dedication to Queen Anne. After completing the Cartoon prints, Gribelin continued to engrave other Italian Old Master history paintings in the royal galleries of Windsor and Kensington. In the London Gazette of 27–9 May 1712, he advertised six prints after Veronese, Tintoretto, Schiavone, Jacobo Palma, and Giulio Romano at 16s and, in 1720, he published a set of prints after Rubens's nine ceiling canvases installed by 1636 in the Banqueting House in Whitehall, celebrating the reign of James I.

Gribelin's Cartoon engravings were of small size (about 18·3×21·3 cm), resembling his book illustrations, a notable example of which is an engraving of The judgement of Hercules after the Neapolitan painter Paolo de Matteis to accompany Shaftesbury's treatise on the principles of composition in history painting, A notion of the historical draught or tablature of the judgement of Hercules (1713).Footnote ³⁰ This is especially significant as Shaftesbury's writings exerted an enormous influence on eighteenth-century discussions of art, aesthetics, and morality. In his Characteristics of men, manners, opinions, times (1711), for which Gribelin also provided illustrations, Shaftesbury recommended Raphael (and the Carracci) as ‘right models of perfection’ upon which anyone who aspired to ‘the character of a man of breeding and politeness’ should form his judgement of arts.Footnote ³¹

The commercial success of the Cartoon prints soon inspired other publishers to seize the profitable opportunity. In 1709, an advertisement appeared for another set of Cartoon prints, first in the Tatler and shortly afterwards in the London Gazette:

Unlike Gribelin who published his own engravings, Henry Overton (1675/6–1751) was a publisher and seller chiefly of maps and popular prints or cheap copies of fine prints.Footnote ³³ The fact that the engraver was not named reflects a typical situation for many anonymous engravers who worked for print and book publishers. Apart from this set, Overton later published, or sold, other versions of the Cartoon prints; his 1717 stock catalogue, for instance, listed Cartoon prints of varied sizes and prices, to cater for various levels of audiences.Footnote ³⁴ Perhaps ironically, the lack of copyright protection and the view of engravers as craftsmen rather than as artists or authors contributed to the widespread circulation of the Cartoon images.

In 1710, Edward Cooper, a successful mezzotint publisher (mainly of portraits) and a member of the Virtuosi of St Luke,Footnote ³⁵ also published a set of mezzotints after the Cartoons. These were made by John Simon (1675–1751), who came also from a Huguenot family and was trained in Paris as a line engraver before coming to England and becoming a major mezzotinter. Cooper also made use of advertisements to promote this publication. The Spectator of 17 March 1712 announced: ‘The Seven Cartons of Raphael Urbin, with the Title cut, done in metzetinto, from the gallery of Hampton-Court: formerly sold for 20 s. now for 15 s. by Edward Cooper, at the Three Pidgeons in Bedford-street.’ This reduction in price was probably the result of competition arising from the appearance of other versions of the Cartoon prints on the market, but it may also have reflected the decreasing value assigned to the mezzotint as a medium for reproducing history paintings. After Cooper's death in 1725, the plates were bought by John Bowles, a major print publisher and seller, and the price of the set was further reduced to 10s.Footnote ³⁶

III

It was in line engraving – the internationally acclaimed technique for reproducing history paintings – that connoisseurs most hoped to see the Cartoons reproduced. To this end, certain Englishmen – ‘several Gent. of note Traveling to Rome’Footnote ³⁷ – invited Nicolas Dorigny (1658–1746), a renowned French engraver then in Rome, to come to England to produce a folio edition of the Cartoons. Dorigny had secured his reputation as the foremost continental engraver by his engravings after Raphael's Cupid and Psyche cycle in the Farnesina in Rome in 1693 and by a lauded print of Raphael's Transfiguration in 1705. His set of Cartoon prints would prove to be the most ambitious project of reproductive printmaking in early eighteenth-century England and an event recorded by George Vertue as marking the rise of line engraving in England.

Dorigny arrived in London in 1711 under the terms of the original proposal that the project be undertaken at the queen's expense, and the prints were ‘to be given as presents to the nobility, foreign princes and ministers’ as expressions of British cultural prestige.Footnote ³⁸ Dorigny's demand for some £4,000 to £5,000 was, however, considered untenable, and it was resolved that Dorigny should undertake the project as a commercial venture at his own expense, though the queen ‘gave him an apartment at Hampton Court’.Footnote ³⁹ Dorigny therefore resorted to a system of subscription, which was well established in book publishing, but now, for the first time, used to publish reproductive prints after Old Master paintings. The subscription opened on 25 October 1711 when Dorigny advertised ‘Proposals for Graving and Printing the Gallery of Raphael, at Hampton Court’ in the Daily Courant. It announced that ‘Signior Nicola Dorigny (lately arriv'd from Rome)’ had been granted a Royal Licence for copying and engraving ‘the most valuable Set of portable Pictures in the World’.

Dorigny claimed that by ‘the modest Price set upon this Work’ (4 guineas a set) he aimed at ‘Reputation rather than Profit’, reminding readers that the set of five prints of Alexander's battles, engraved by Girard Audran after Le Brun's paintings, sold for the much higher price of 20 guineas, even though the originals were ‘much inferior to those of Raphael’. The proposal also indicated the sophisticated audience Dorigny sought to attract, as he confidently welcomed ‘the Judgement of those of the Nobility and Gentry of this Nation’ for his undertaking, a gesture and language clearly distinct from those employed by publishers like Henry Overton, Edward Cooper, or John Bowles, who aimed to cater for more diverse levels of society.

What further distinguished Dorigny's project from other Cartoon publications was ‘endorsement’ from a leading literary figure, Sir Richard Steele, who devoted an entire issue of the Spectator to it. The article appeared on 19 November 1711; a century later it was deemed ‘one of the most dignified advertisements ever penned’.Footnote ⁴⁰ Steele's article is significant in the sense that it was one of the earliest writings by an Englishman to comment on painting using terms informed by the latest artistic ideas. The relationship between artists and men of letters in this case is also noteworthy; this seems to have reflected artists' effort to elevate their social status by making literary allies as well as revealing a strong literary element underpinning early writings on painting. Though not renowned as a connoisseur or art theorist, Steele was involved in artistic circles. He was painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller in 1711 in the famous ‘Kit-Cat Club’ series, and was invited to join the newly established Academy in Great Queen Street under Kneller's governorship. Dorigny, arriving in England in 1711, also joined the Academy and was elected one of its twelve directors.Footnote ⁴¹ It was probably in this milieu that Steele was prompted to write an enthusiastic article both on painting and on Dorigny's project of reproducing ‘the most valuable Set of portable Pictures in the World’.

Steele adopted the dominant notion of the sister artsFootnote ⁴² – popularized by the Poet Laureate John Dryden's 1695 translation of Du Fresnoy's De arte graphica – and prefixed a quotation from Horace's Ars poetica to his article: ‘Mutum est pictura poema’ (a picture is a silent poem). As Steele developed his comparison, painting was a ‘poetry’ which was more effective than words in its ability to impress ideas of virtue and humanity upon the mind while also requiring much less capacity and time. He stressed the use of painting for the improvement of manners, and claimed: ‘we should not see a good History-Piece without receiving an instructive Lecture’. Proof of his argument, Steele claimed, could be nowhere better seen than in the Raphael Cartoons. After lauding Raphael on aesthetic, moral, and religious grounds and praising each of the Cartoons, Steele eloquently called for public support of Dorigny's project and keenly urged subscriptions:

‘No opportunity of this kind ought to be neglected’, Steele affirmed, adding that supporting this project was ‘the greatest Honour we can do our Country’.Footnote ⁴⁴

Dorigny began work in spring 1712; on 9 March 1719, he placed an advertisement in the Daily Courant announcing that the plates had been finished and would be delivered to subscribers in early April. In April 1719, Dorigny presented copies of his folio edition, Pinacotheca Hamptoniana, to George I and to the prince and princess of Wales and received a knighthood in 1720 for this unprecedented undertaking.Footnote ⁴⁵

Dorigny's set of Cartoon prints were clearly aimed at the upper end of the market: the inscriptions were exclusively in Latin; the price, 4 guineas a set (no less than five for non-subscribers), was the highest of all the Cartoon prints. For those who desired a fine set of Cartoon engravings at a lower cost, Thomas Bowles II (1689/90?–1767), older brother of John Bowles, provided an alternative in 1721. In the Post Boy of 29 April 1721, Thomas Bowles II advertised ‘Eight Prints of the Cartons, with a Frontispiece, finely engraved by some of the best Hands in Europe’ for the price of 1 guinea. One of the ‘best Hands’, Claude Dubosc (1682–1746), had originally been summoned by Dorigny from Paris to assist him. After some dispute, Dubosc left Dorigny, but remained in London and worked for print publishers and booksellers. The other three engravers producing the set for Thomas Bowles were also French: Nicolas-Henri Tardieu, Nicolas-Dauphin de Beauvais, and Bernard Lépicié. Bowles's employment of these French engravers was probably intended to extend his market to the continent, and the set was sold wholesale in Paris by François de Poilly, as stated at the bottom of the frontispiece. Their employment also reflected the fact that, in the early eighteenth century, France was the major provider of line engraving technique and England had few competent hands in this field. The arrival of Dorigny in England – followed by a new generation of French engravers, who then trained English pupils – appeared to George Vertue to be a significant turning point, as already noted. In his notebook Vertue remarked: ‘From [Dorigny's] comeing to England I may justly date the rise of the reputation of sculpture graving’,Footnote ⁴⁶ indicating the extent to which the engravings after the Raphael Cartoons symbolized a watershed in printmaking techniques in England.

Remarkably, less than two decades after Gribelin's first set was published, several other versions of the Cartoons appeared on the market. The Raphael Cartoons continued to inspire new reproductions during the mid-eighteenth century, though these were often rather copies of copies. Apart from the 1 guinea set, Bowles also sold a much cheaper set at 1s 6d.Footnote ⁴⁷ In 1722, Edward Cooper advertised in the London Journal another set of Cartoon prints ‘done in mezzotinto by Mr. Peter Pelham, much more correctly than hitherto performed’.Footnote ⁴⁸ The emphasis on ‘much more correctly’ was probably a selling rhetoric, seeking to distinguish it from other versions on the market, but also suggesting a certain awareness of the relation between originals and copies. For some, the issue of ‘correctness’ and the skill and style of the engraver was important; for others, it was the general appearance of the Cartoons that mattered and an approximate rendering was sufficient. In 1729, a sheet containing tiny representations of the seven Cartoons and Raphael's portrait set around some lines of calligraphy was available. Beneath the portrait of Raphael, it was particularly stated that the images were engraved from ‘the paintings of that Celebrated painter raphael urbin at the Royal Palace of Hampton Court, for which Lewis the late King of France offered to Queen Ann 700,000 Pounds’ – their value thus a matter of national pride. In 1731, Elisha Kirkall (1681/2–1742) published a set of the Cartoons in ‘chiaroscuro’, printed in green, red, or yellow. By 1754, a cheap set of royal sheet engravings and a cheaper set of woodcut royals were available from publishers William and Cluer Dicey, who also stocked an engraving of all seven Cartoons on one sheet.Footnote ⁴⁹ The fact that there were so many versions available means that the designs of the Raphael Cartoons could be bought in a wide variety of formats, from the highest to the crudest quality, at prices from 5 guineas to 1s or less. Images of the Cartoons – whether copied ‘correctly’ or not – may thus have extended to a wide spectrum of society.

Another important source revealing the popularity and influence of the images of the Cartoons lies in the field of book illustration. Since the Cartoons depicted the Acts of the Apostles, it is not surprising to find them employed in Bible illustrations. In fact, they were among the most reproduced images in eighteenth-century English Bibles.Footnote ⁵⁰ For many readers, Bible illustrations ‘would have been the first encounter they might have had with the names’ of the canonical Old Masters.Footnote ⁵¹ Even though they would not by this means become acquainted with the history of art, they would at least be made aware of such artistic treasures in England. One unusual example of this kind is a children's Bible: The New Testament adapted to the capacities of children … adorned with cuts; designed by the celebrated Raphael, and engraved by Mr. Walker (London, 1755), which had seven illustrations after the Cartoons with the lettering ‘Raphael pinxit./Walker sculp.’ below each plate. Elsewhere, the second volume of Francis Fawkes's Complete family Bible (London, 1761–2) included six plates after the Cartoons. Their relatively high quality and the inscription distinguished them from other cruder and unattributed plates common in book illustrations. These two examples clearly suggest that the name and images of the Cartoons may have penetrated into a wide range of families around the mid-eighteenth century, far beyond the circles of connoisseurs and artists.

IV

Publication of the Cartoon prints, in various formats and at a wide range of prices, made the Cartoons the most widely ‘visible’ works of an Old Master in early eighteenth-century England. But their significance was not merely a matter of quantity. The rapidly blooming print culture meant that a large number of prints of diverse subjects were produced and distributed through an ever-growing network of print-selling business. Portraits had been the major output, while topographical views and prospects began to flourish from the 1700s; two decades later, a market also emerged for subject prints designed by English artists such as William Hogarth.Footnote ⁵² Reproductive prints after other Old Masters in private collections increasingly appeared from the 1720s, including Arthur Pond and Charles Knapton's Prints in imitation of drawings (1735–6) and Italian landscapes (1741–6), and culminating with the ambitious project of John Boydell (1720–1804), A collection of prints engraved after the most capital paintings in England, the first volume of which was published in 1769.Footnote ⁵³ In this context, the Raphael Cartoons nevertheless enjoyed an unrivalled status, since they were not only disseminated visually, but also textually. Beyond providing just a prominent spectacle, the Raphael Cartoons lay at the core of an on-going construction of painting as a ‘liberal’ or ‘polite’ art. The Cartoons were the subject of a wide range of theoretical and critical discussions, a status that no other paintings or prints enjoyed in the period. Taken together, these ‘visual’ and ‘textual’ publications helped to shape social awareness of the value of painting and its function in society. In this process, the Raphael Cartoons came to be seen as a supreme artistic achievement and, more crucially, as embodying both an artistic model for English artists to emulate and a touchstone of true taste for connoisseurs.

To understand why the Raphael Cartoons were regarded as representing the artistic canon requires us to consider the state of artistic thinking in early eighteenth-century England, where the search for artistic/aesthetic standards and the role of painting in moral improvement were growing concerns. This, in turn, represented a reaction against the depressed status in which painting had long lingered both conceptually and socially. To argue for the dignity of painting, one needed the support of works that were intellectually and morally, as well as artistically, significant. John Smith's set of nine mezzotints of the Loves of the gods (1708–9) after paintings thought to be by Titian then at Blenheim – though it might be appreciated privately – was hardly suitable for promotion as an exemplar of the highest that art could attain and inspired no written comments by contemporaries. By contrast, the Raphael Cartoons, both in content and in form, provided good examples for promoters of painting. In his Spectator article, quoted earlier, Richard Steele cited them to demonstrate the potential of history painting to represent and communicate serious emotions and moral notions. For instance, on St Paul Preaching at Athens, he commented:

These expressions of the passions were thought to have power to move the viewer to contemplate moral ideas. For Steele and for others concerned with artistic morality, the representation of virtues and vices in the characters and actions of real men and women constituted the value of history painting. In fact, this notion of painting would become an important basis for artistic discourse throughout the eighteenth century.

As noted earlier, around 1700 a series of French art discourses were introduced into England, in which the notion of the hierarchy of genres was influential. History painting was deemed highest in the ranking, and, without doubt, the Raphael Cartoons provided a vital example, depicting the stories of the Acts of St Peter and St Paul.Footnote ⁵⁵ In contrast to portraits or other paintings representing amorous themes in mythology, everyday life, or low life, the Cartoons – to those who adopted the academic discourse – represented the highest ‘public’ value painting could attain. When, in 1715, the painter-theorist Jonathan Richardson (1667–1745) set out to compose An essay on the theory of painting the Raphael Cartoons unsurprisingly occupied a predominant place; the first edition even had an index to every remark of the Cartoons. This book was in effect the earliest attempt by an Englishman to erect a theoretical framework for painting and to propose rules for judging artistic merit, based on the system of French art theories, coupled with an English emphasis on empirical observation.Footnote ⁵⁶ Following continental precedents, Richardson divided painting into seven parts: invention, expression, composition, drawing, colouring, handling, and ‘grace and greatness’. To illuminate the rules of invention, expression, and composition – the most valued categories in academic theories – Richardson constantly cited the Cartoons. For instance, when talking about painters' licence to depart from natural and historical truth to improve upon the subject, Richardson referred to the pillars of the temple in The healing of the lame man. He argued that such pillars were not known in ancient architecture, but were ‘so nobly invented by Raphael, and so prodigiously magnificent, that it would have been a pity if he had not indulged himself in this piece of licentiousness, which undoubtedly he knew to be such’.Footnote ⁵⁷ On the rule of expression, Richardson greatly admired Raphael's representation of St Paul preaching at Athens to such a degree that he felt

Overall, Richardson argued that Raphael's works ‘ought to be carefully studied by him who would make himself master in expression, more especially with relation to those passions and sentiments that have nothing of [the] savage and cruel; for his angelick mind was a stranger to these’.Footnote ⁵⁹ Raphael the person, as well as his work, was treated as setting a moral standard. At this stage, Richardson could not refrain from exclaiming:

To Richardson, the Raphael Cartoons provided the supreme artistic models, of which England was especially needful and should be proud to have had among its treasures. This praise of Raphael, especially his Cartoons, continued to feature in Richardson's artistic guidebook for Grand Tourists, An account of some of the statues, bas-reliefs, drawings, and pictures in Italy & France, with remarks (1722). More than a practical guide, this book announced artistic taste and provided an art-historical statement testified by first-hand experience.Footnote ⁶¹ In declaring: ‘we prefer the Painters that lived two hundred Years ago to those of a later Time, and the Roman School to that of Venice’,Footnote ⁶² Richardson embraced the values of design and composition that the Roman school represented, and emphasized these as the principal criteria for judging painting. Since Raphael had been hailed as the head of the Roman school, it is unsurprising that Richardson devoted an impressively long section to a detailed appraisal of Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican. Significantly, Richardson deliberately compared them with the Cartoons at Hampton Court, arguing that in the Vatican ‘Raffaele is seen Here indeed, but not So as to give a Just Idea of his Merit’, whereas at Hampton Court ‘one may receive a Higher, a Juster, and a more Complete Idea of him than Here, or anywhere Else’. Hampton Court was, Richardson enthusiastically announced again, ‘the great School of Rafaelle!’Footnote ⁶³

V

‘The School of Raphael’, announced by Richardson around 1720, was to be realized by publication in the late 1750s. In 1759, John Boydell published a drawing book entitled The school of Raphael: or, the student's guide to expression in historical painting, which was a legacy of Dorigny's project of engraving the Raphael Cartoons.Footnote ⁶⁴ It included ninety plates of the heads from the Cartoons, drawn by Dorigny and engraved by eight French engravers,Footnote ⁶⁵ and texts written by Benjamin Ralph, a member of the Society of Artists of Great Britain.Footnote ⁶⁶ The genesis of the book was recounted retrospectively in 1764:

This drawing book promoted Raphael at a fundamental level: it taught how to represent different passions by the examples of the heads in the Cartoons. It was certainly not the first such publication, nor the first to make use of the Cartoons. From the late seventeenth century onwards, drawing books were published, consisting of plates intended to give elementary instruction on drawing human heads and bodies. By the mid-eighteenth century, such drawing books were copious and continued to proliferate, thanks to the expansion – and sometimes ruthless piracy – of major print-publishing businesses such as that of the Overtons, the Bowleses, and Robert Sayer. By 1755, for example, Robert Sayer had published ‘A new drawing-book of heads from the Cartoons at Hampton-Court, on six folio copper-plates. Price 1s.’.Footnote ⁶⁸ Having established himself as a ‘fine print’ publisher, John Boydell produced a much more ‘lavish’ edition: The school of Raphael cost £1 1s for a bound volume, or the heads with the description of the Cartoons could be purchased separately at the price of 10s 6d.Footnote ⁶⁹ More than a practical drawing manual, The school of Raphael was also intended as an item for collection and, more importantly, as a statement of artistic taste. In the introduction, Benjamin Ralph openly challenged the schematic illustrations of the passions codified from the teaching of the French academician Le Brun,Footnote ⁷⁰ deeming them ‘extremely defective’ in comparison to the ‘vast fund of variety’ of Raphael's Cartoons. The school of Raphael aimed to provide a better and larger lexicon of the variety and degree of the passions for historical compositions. It contained a two-page index before the plates, relating each named passion to the engraved heads. For instance, ‘dejected arrogance’ could be found in the head of Elymas, ‘joy’ in the old man in Paul and Barnabas at Lystra, and ‘horror’ in the woman in the foreground of The death of Ananias.

Interestingly, Benjamin Ralph added a postscript to the introduction, noting that he could not help saying, ‘however he may be censored or ridiculed for such an assertion’, that ‘a collection of Passions, as they are found in Nature, might be made from the works of Mr. Hogarth, which would do honour to that Master and prove of great utility to young Students’.Footnote ⁷¹ By the time Ralph made this remark, William Hogarth had experimented with his ‘modern moral subjects’ and had expounded his aesthetic ideas in The analysis of beauty (1753). But however popular his prints, Hogarth's art – self-consciously representing things ‘as they are found in Nature’ – was deemed low in the hierarchy according to academic ideas, which had been transplanted into English soil and were soon to be reaffirmed by a new generation of English painters, notably Joshua Reynolds, who had recently returned from Italy and aspired to the ‘grand style’. Unsurprisingly, no such notion or book as ‘The school of Hogarth’ ever appeared. Nonetheless, Ralph's suggestion that Hogarth's representations of human passions ‘as they are’ could be useful for young students disclosed a certain wish to expand the accepted norm of artistic expression, amidst the growing diversity of artistic taste in the mid-eighteenth century. Notwithstanding, Raphael and his Cartoons stood as the canonical model in the early eighteenth century, and subsequently remained an influential exemplar. In fact, Hogarth himself, like other English painters, had been keen to study Raphael's Cartoons. His Characters and caricaturas (1743), originally designed as a subscription ticket for his Marriage à-la-mode series, contrasted three heads from Raphael's Cartoons with caricatures derived from Ghezzi, Carracci, and Leonardo.Footnote ⁷² Hogarth also etched four heads from Elymas struck with blindness possibly after his father-in-law, James Thornhill's, drawings of the Cartoons. This plate, when it was published in 1781 by Hogarth's wife, was thought to be evidence of a possible joint venture by Thornhill and Hogarth to publish a drawing book based on the Raphael Cartoons.Footnote ⁷³

In addition to this use of the Cartoons as drawing models, commentaries intended to teach exactly how to appreciate the Cartoons also appeared which demonstrate the development of art criticism. They appeared within art treatises: as mentioned earlier, Jonathan Richardson made frequent reference to the Cartoons throughout his several works. They also found a place in ‘descriptions’ or guidebooks, a new kind of publication intended for country-house – or in this case, royal-palace – visitors or simply arm-chair travellers. In 1742, George Bickham Junior (1706–71), known chiefly as an engraver and printseller, published Deliciæ Britannicæ: or, the curiosities of Hampton-Court and Windsor-Castle. As Bickham stated in the preface, the ‘principal Design’ of his book was to ‘set the best Pieces of the best Painters in the fairest and most advantageous Point of Light’.Footnote ⁷⁴ Notably, Deliciæ Britannicæ included a frontispiece showing Raphael's portrait and provided eight-page comments on the Cartoons as well as accounts of Raphael's life and style – a spotlight turned on no other Old Masters.

Single treatises devoted to the Cartoons started to appear in the mid-eighteenth century. In 1758 a six-page pamphlet aimed at providing ‘A description of the Cartoons at Hampton-Court’. Echoing Richard Steele's and Jonathan Richardson's praise of Raphael's ideal imitation, the anonymous author declared that the Cartoons demonstrated ‘the exalted ideas of Raphael who has thus improved on human nature’: the apostles showed ‘a sublime representation of humility and gentleness’; other common people were ‘like gentlemen, the fishermen, the beggars have something in them above what we see in those orders of them’.Footnote ⁷⁵ The author further admired how Raphael handled his subjects and lauded the expressions of each character and their effect on the viewer. A much more elaborate description of the Cartoons appeared a year later in The school of Raphael. In 1764, one year after the Cartoons were moved from Hampton Court to Buckingham Palace, this description was re-issued independently under the title A description of the Cartons of Raphael Urbin, in the Queen's Palace, consisting of forty-three pages in octavo. In the ‘Advertisement’, the author, Benjamin Ralph, explained:

This Description undoubtedly marked an important development in art criticism. Ralph described in detail the pictorial structures and elements in each Cartoon, explained their contribution to the overall effect, and interpreted their meaning. He also paid particular attention to the expression of different characters. On The healing of the lame man, for instance, he pointed out that Raphael had also introduced

This book exemplified the progress of art criticism from an earlier short and generalized phase of eulogy towards more detailed description and explanation. It also illustrates how the mid-eighteenth-century English public would have appreciated, or was taught to appreciate, the Cartoons.

VI

It is no exaggeration to say that the fame and public understanding of Raphael in England in the first half of the eighteenth century was chiefly based on the Cartoons or, more precisely, on printed images or words describing the Cartoons. Before the Cartoons were displayed at Hampton Court in 1699, English knowledge of Raphael was derived mainly from books written by continental writers, or from drawings and prints after his other works in Italy or France. The Raphael Cartoons, through their publication, came to occupy a central place in the formation of art-historical consciousness in early eighteenth-century England. Their images filled the first pages of collectors' albums, decorated the walls of fashionable houses, and extended into the Bible-reading of ordinary families. Their merits provided the foundation of discourses on painting, and an expression of the passions as a model for students to imitate. The names of Raphael and his Cartoons – which acquired an ‘iconic’ value – were frequently evoked by various writers on art and taste during the mid-eighteenth century. Such value was even transferred to English painters; for example, An historical and chronological series of the most eminent painters (1739) ended with Sir James Thornhill, who was there entitled ‘the English Raphael’.Footnote ⁷⁷

Although the Raphael Cartoons enjoyed unequalled praise and popularity, this does not mean that there was no criticism of the Cartoons or of Raphael.Footnote ⁷⁸ Nor does it suggest that the growing picture market entirely conformed to an artistic standard based on academic ideas. The consumption of pictures, due to its increasing visibility and its relation to current debate on luxury and taste, became an unavoidable social issue towards the mid-century.

Raphael's place in this debate is revealing. Although constraints of space preclude full exploration of this issue, one example briefly illustrates the point. In his Letters concerning taste (1755), the first book-length contribution in English to the subject, John Gilbert Cooper (1722–69) condemned the fanciful taste of the nouveaux riches as deviating from ‘truth’ and ‘nature’. In opposition to degenerate taste, Cooper, like many others, championed Raphael as representing ‘truth’ and ‘nature’, promoting his works as embodying true taste in their ‘blending the Elegance of the Antique and the Simplicity of Nature together, and spreading that undefineable Grace’.Footnote ⁷⁹ After half a century's promotion and popularization, the name of Raphael had thus become such a label that critics could easily use it to attack rivals or to argue their own case. It also suggests that a certain notion of painting had been erected upon the core values thought to be embodied in Raphael, which it was thought should govern good taste.

One question remains: without the Cartoons in an English royal palace, would Raphael still have an important place in English art-historical thinking in the period? Would Titian, Rubens, or any other Old Master have been chosen as the model instead? Would the rise of art-historical consciousness still have the same shape and direction? Certainly the ‘accident’ of English possession of the Cartoons provided a bridge which facilitated the assimilation of continental academic theories, but this could only happen when there was the need. The rise of art-historical consciousness was in effect a response to, and manifestation of, such a need to keep England abreast of continental artistic development so as to transform England into a modern civilized state. As long as England was open to continental influences, it could not avoid dominant academic ideas. At the core of such academic ideas was the view of Raphael, head of the Roman school, as a perfect painter who assimilated others' merits into his own and thus the supreme model for artistic instruction. Although Rubens's Whitehall ceiling was engraved in 1720 and English readers of Roger de Piles's work would have been aware of the equal ranking of Rubens and Raphael,Footnote ⁸⁰ Rubens's Whitehall ceiling did not become the focus of discussion, nor did it serve the role played by the Cartoons.Footnote ⁸¹ When the Royal Academy of Arts was finally established in 1768, Raphael remained a model and his Cartoons an exemplar of history painting cited by the president Sir Joshua Reynolds in his Discourses delivered to the Academy students.Footnote ⁸²

The significance of the publications associated with the Cartoons, then, resides more in the extent to which they heralded a trend towards the opening up of an art world previously consisting of originals possessed and enjoyed privately almost only by royal and aristocratic collectors. From the 1720s, Old Master paintings in private collections were increasingly to be engraved and published – as a result of both the rise of awareness of the public value of painting and the advancement of printmaking technique. Access to other models therefore became possible, and this contributed not only to the diversification of artistic taste, but also to the sophistication of art-historical knowledge.

Reproductive prints, paradoxically, endow the originals with a meaning that is newly created in print form and thereby accessible to wider audiences. Publishing the Raphael Cartoons is not simply a matter of reproducing their material presence; the act also has to be understood as a process of abstracting meaning and value. Once reproductions are made and diffused, whether someone possesses the originals perhaps becomes less important in terms of the formulation of artistic ideas. Art-historical consciousness, fuelled by material objects, begins to acquire a life of its own.