During the last decade, the Department focused its activity on the study and on the delicate restoration of the Flemish series of the Acts of the Apostles, contributing to the realization of the exhibition Raphael: Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2010, alongside which in the Vatican the evocative original sixteenth-century layout of the tapestries on the walls of the Sistine Chapel was recreated. During recent years also the series with the Stories of the Life of Christ was the object of interest of new scientific studies: in 2009 two tapestries from the series were positioned at the sides of the altar of the Pauline Chapel, in the heart of the Apostolic Palace, while the study and restoration of the entire series focused on the creative process and the production techniques. Additionally, in collaboration with the Department of Decorative Arts, a long intervention was carried out over the course of the years and only recently completed, to restore to a safe level of conservation the fascinating Pfister collection, consisting of around 2000 fragments of fabric from all over the world.
In 2017 a large display case was planned and implemented in the Alexandrine Hall of the Galleries of the Vatican Library, to display the recently restored, precious and rare thirteenth-century cope in opus anglicanum. On the occasion of the anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the superb tapestry of the Last Supper, deriving from Leonardo’s Cenacle, was put in a safe condition and restored, and has been the subject of two exhibitions in France, at the Castle of Clos Lucé (Leonardo da Vinci's the last supper for Francis I, a masterpiece in gold and silk, 2019) and in Milan, in the Palazzo Reale (La cena di Leonardo per Francesco I: un capolavoro in seta e argento, 2019). Furthermore, in 2018, the Room of Tributes of Pius IX was newly arranged, with a project that involved the creation of new and modern display cases intended to contain the ancient textiles of the Treasury of the Sancta Sanctorum, and the refined “parato pontificale” (papal liturgical) vestments donated in 1600 to Clement VIII Aldobrandini by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand de’ Medici.