Tapestry Cartoon Fragment: The Top of Woman's Head with Hair Braided over a Cloth Headdress 1500 - 1550

This is a fragment of a tapestry cartoon by Raphael, created around the early 16th century. Executed in a mix of drawing and painting, it captures the intricate details of a woman's head. Note how the composition focuses on the interplay between the textures of the braided hair and the soft draping of the cloth headdress. Raphael’s use of contrasting light and shadow adds depth, emphasizing the tactile quality of the materials represented. The turbulent cloudscape in the background is rendered in stark white and grey, underscoring the serenity of the central figure. Raphael was a master of visual rhetoric, employing classical forms and humanist ideals to create art that was both aesthetically pleasing and intellectually stimulating. Here, in this fragment, we observe Raphael’s dedication to formal values of line, texture and structure to convey a sense of beauty and emotional depth, inviting the viewer to contemplate the relationship between form and meaning.