display in the background. The painting's presence at the Louvre gave English painters like Joseph Farington (on 1 and 6 September 1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (in September 1802) the opportunity to study it. Turner would dedicate the first of his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy to the picture. Farington also reported on others having been to see the picture: Swiss painter Henry Fuseli, for whom it was second at the Louvre only to Titian's The Death of St. Peter Martyr (1530), and English painter John Hoppner. The Anglo-American painter Benjamin West "said that the opinion of ages stood confirmed that it still held the first place". Farington himself expressed his sentiments as follows: After the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1815, envoys to Pope Pius VII, Antonio Canova and Marino Marini managed to secure The Transfiguration (along with 66 other pictures) as part of the Treaty of Paris. By agreement with the Congress of Vienna, the works were to be exhibited to the public. The original gallery was in the Borgia Apartment in the Apostolic Palace. After several moves within the Vatican, the painting now resides in the Pinacoteca Vaticana. Reception The reception of the painting is well documented. Between the year 1525 and 1935, at least 229 written sources can be identified that describe, analyse, praise or criticise The Transfiguration. The first descriptions of the painting after Raphael's death in 1520 called The Transfiguration already a masterpiece, but this status evolved until the end of the 16th century. In his notes of a travel to Rome in 1577, the Spanish humanist Pablo de Céspedes called it the most famous oil painting in the world for the first time. The painting would preserve this authority for more than 300 years. It was acknowledged and repeated by many authors, like the connoisseur François Raguenet, who analysed Raphael's composition in 1701. In his opinion, its outline drawing, the effect of light, the colours and the arrangement of the figures made The Transfiguration the most perfect painting in the world. Jonathan Richardson Senior and Junior dared to criticise the overwhelming status of The Transfiguration, asking if this painting could really be the most famous painting in the world. They criticised that the composition was divided into an upper and a lower half that would not correspond to each other. Also the lower half would draw too much