In these busy years, 1515 to 1516, the famous cartoons for the Sistine Chapel were made. Sixtus IV. had built the chapel. Michael Angelo, under Julius II., had painted in it his "History of the Creation," and "Prophets and Sibyls." And now Raphael was asked to make cartoons for ten pieces of tapestry, to be hung before the wainscoting on high festivals. The cartoons are, "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes," "Christ's Charge to Peter," "The Martyrdom of St. Stephen," "The Healing of the Lame Man," "The Death of Ananias," "The Conversion of St. Paul," "Elymas struck with Blindness," "Paul and Barnabas at Lystra," "St. Paul Preaching at Athens," and "Saint Paul in Prison." The cartoons were sent to Arras, in Flanders, and wrought in wool, silk, and gold. Brought to Rome in 1519, they were hung in St. Peter's, on the feast of St. Stephen. The enthusiasm of the Romans was unbounded. Vasari says this work "seems rather to have been performed by miracle than by the aid of man." These tapestries, after many changes, are now in the Vatican, much soiled and faded. Of the cartoons, twelve feet by from fourteen to eighteen feet, with figures above life-size, seven of them are to be seen in the South Kensington Museum. They were purchased at Arras by Charles I., on the recommendation of Rubens. They are yearly studied by thousands of visitors. Grimm calls the cartoons "Raphael's greatest productions." He considers the "Death of Ananias" "as the most purely dramatic of all his compositions." "Compared with these," says Hazlitt, "all other pictures look like oil and varnish; we are stopped and attracted by the coloring, the pencilling, the finishing, the instrumentalities of art; but _here_ the painter seems to have flung his mind upon the canvas. His thoughts, his great ideas alone, prevail; there is nothing between us and the subject; we look through a frame and see Scripture histories, and are made actual spectators in miraculous events. "Not to speak it profanely, they are a sort of a revelation of the subjects of which they treat; there is an ease and freedom of manner about them which brings preternatural characters and situations home to us with the familiarity of every-day occurrences; and while the figures fill, raise, and satisfy the mind, they seem to have cost the painter nothing. Everywhere else we see the means; here we arrive at the end apparently without any means." Raphael was now overwhelmed with orders for pictures. He had shown worldly wisdom--a thing not always possessed by genius--in having his works engraved by men under his own supervision, so that they were everywhere scattered among the people.