In Spring 1992, the seven Raphael tapestry cartoons on loan from the Royal Collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum were taken down from display for the restoration and redecoration of the gallery. This provided an opportunity to re-examine them, using techniques that had either not been available or were less well-developed when the cartoons were last conserved in the mid-1960s. This article outlines the main findings of the examination, the data from which will be stored as a permanent resource in the Museum's Print Room.

Bronzino's portrait of a woman holding a volume of Petrarch's sonnets in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (Fig.35), is one of his most striking and unconventional likenesses. Unique among his portraits in being in the profile view, and thus suggesting a somewhat unusual intention, it departs from his established canon of female representation, both in its muted palette and in the sobriety and modesty of the sitter's dress, with anecdotal references to furnishings and setting suppressed entirely in favour of a plain grey background. Just as the panel is unembellished by eye-catching brilliance of pigment, so the woman lacks the conventional indications of wealth and beauty that Bronzino so specialised in conjuring about his sitters. She is veiled and her substantial coil of hair is tightly bound inside her cap. Her sober dress is offset by five simple gold accessories: two tiny pins, holding her veil in place; a spherical button at the collar of her chemise; a long gold chain necklace, knotted towards the bottom, its end concealed behind the edge of her bodice; and a gold ring with a rectangular black gem set between two fleurs-de-lys. Yet her principal adornment is surely the large volume of poetry she so prominently displays, its pages dimpling with startling verisimilitude under the pressure of her fingertips (Fig.38), inscribed with two clearly legible sonnets.