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Musei Vaticani Review

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Musei Vaticani

Address: Vatican Museums, Viale Vaticano, Rome | Map It
Phone: 06/69883332
www.vatican.va

The Vatican Museums

Category: Museums/Galleries
Location: Vatican

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Fodor's Review:

Other than the pope and his papal court, the occupants of the Vatican are some of the most famous artworks in the world. The museums that contain them are part of the Vatican Palace, residence of the popes since 1377. The palace consists of a number of individual buildings containing an estimated 1,400 rooms, chapels, and galleries. The pope and his household occupy only a small part of the palace, most of the rest of which is given over to the Vatican Library and Museums. Beyond the glories of the Sistine Chapel, the collection is so extraordinarily rich you may just wish to skim the surface, but few will want to miss out on the great antique sculptures, the Raphael Stanze, and Old Master paintings, such as Leonardo da Vinci's St. Jerome.

Subsidiary Museums

Among the collections on the way to the chapel, the Egyptian Museum (in which Room II reproduces an underground chamber tomb of the Valley of Kings) is well worth a stop. The Chiaramonti Museum was organized by the Neoclassical sculptor Canova and contains almost 1,000 copies of classical sculpture. The gems of the Vatican's sculpture collection are in the Pio-Clementino Museum, however. Just off the hall in Room X, you can find the Apoxyomenos (Scraper), a beautiful 1st-century AD copy of a bronze statue of an athlete. There are other even more famous pieces in the Octagonal Courtyard, where Pope Julius II installed the greatest pieces from his private collection: on the left stands the celebrated Apollo Belvedere. In the far corner, on the same side of the courtyard, is the Laocoön group, found on Rome's Esquiline Hill in 1506, held to be possibly the single most important antique sculpture group in terms of its influence on Renaissance artists.

An adjacent hall dedicated to animals is filled with sculpture and mosaics done in colored marble, some of them very charming. There's a gallery of classical statues and a Gallery of Busts; the smallish Mask Room displays a lively mosaic pavement from the emperor Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli just outside Rome, and a copy of the 4th-century BC Greek sculptor Praxiteles' Cnidian Venus. In the Hall of the Muses, the Belvedere Torso occupies center stage: this is a fragment of a 1st-century BC statue, probably of Hercules, all rippling muscles and classical dignity, much admired by Michelangelo. The lovely neoclassical room of the Rotonda has an ancient mosaic pavement and a huge porphyry basin from Nero's palace, as well as several colossal statues. The room on the Greek-cross plan contains two fine porphyry sarcophagi (great marble burial caskets), one of Costantia and one of St. Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine.

Upstairs is an Etruscan Museum, an Antiquarium, with Roman originals; and the domed Sala della Biga, with an ancient chariot. In addition, there are the Candelabra Gallery and the Tapestry Gallery, including some designed by Raphael. Perhaps used more as a grand passageway, the incredibly long Gallery of Maps is frescoed with 40 maps of Italy and the papal territories, commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII in 1580. Nearby is the Apartment of Pius V.

The Raphael Stanze

Rivaling the Sistine Chapel for artistic interest are the Stanze di Raffaello (Raphael Rooms), which are directly over the Borgia apartments and can be very crowded with people. Pope Julius II moved into this suite of rooms in 1507, four years after his election. Reluctant to continue living in the Borgia apartments with their memories of his ill-famed predecessor, Alexander VI, he called in Raphael to decorate his new quarters. When people talk about the Italian High Renaissance—thought to be the very pinnacle of Western art—it's Raphael's frescoes they're probably thinking about. The theme of the Segnatura Room, the first to be frescoed, was painted almost entirely by Raphael himself (as opposed to the other rooms, which were painted in large part by his assistants). The theme of the room—which may broadly be said to be "enlightenment"—reflects the fact that this was Julius's private library.

Theology triumphs in the fresco known as the Disputa, or Debate on the Holy Sacrament, on the wall behind you as you enter. Opposite, the School of Athens glorifies philosophy in its greatest exponents. Plato (perhaps a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci), in the center, is debating a point with Aristotle. The pensive figure on the stairs is thought to be modeled after Michelangelo, who was painting the Sistine ceiling at the same time Raphael was working here. Michelangelo does not appear in preparatory drawings, so Raphael may have added his fellow artist's portrait after admiring his work. In the foreground on the right are Euclid, the architect Bramante, and, on the far right, the handsome youth just behind the white-clad older man is Raphael himself. Over the window on the left are Parnassus, who represents poetry, and Apollo, the Muses, and famous poets, many of whom are likenesses of Raphael's contemporaries. In the lunette over the window opposite, Raphael painted figures representing and alluding to the Cardinal and Theological Virtues, and subjects showing the establishment of written codes of law. Beautiful personifications of the four subject areas, Theology, Poetry, Philosophy, and Jurisprudence, are painted in circular pictures on the ceiling above.

The first in the series is the Incendio Room; it was the last to be painted in Raphael's lifetime, and was executed mainly by Giulio Romano, who worked from Raphael's drawings for the new pope, Leo X. It served as the pope's dining room. The frescoes depict stories of previous popes called Leo, the best of them showing the great fire in the Borgo (the neighborhood between the Vatican and Castel Sant'Angelo), which threatened to destroy the original St. Peter's Basilica in AD 847; miraculously, Pope Leo IV extinguished it with the sign of the cross. The other frescoes show the coronation of Charlemagne by Leo III in St. Peter's Basilica, the Oath of Leo III, and a naval battle with the Saracens at Ostia in AD 849, after which Pope Leo IV showed clemency to the defeated.

The Eliodoro Room is a private antechamber. Working on the theme of Divine Providence's miraculous intervention in defense of endangered faith, Raphael depicted Leo the Great's encounter with Attila; it's on the wall to your left as you enter. The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple of Jerusalem, opposite the entrance, refers to Pope Julius II's insistence on the Church's right to temporal possessions. He appears on the left, watching the scene. On the left window wall, the Liberation of St. Peter is one of Raphael's best-known and most effective works.

Adjacent to the Raphael Rooms, the Hall of Constantine was decorated by Giulio Romano and other assistants of Raphael after the master's untimely death in 1520. The frescoes represent various scenes from the life of the emperor Constantine. Don't miss the tiny Chapel of Nicholas V, aglow with Fra Angelico (1395-1455) frescoes of episodes from the life of St. Stephen (above) and St. Lawrence (below), one of the greatest gems of Renaissance art. If it weren't under the same roof as Raphael's and Michelangelo's works, it would undoubtedly draw greater attention.

Returning downstairs, you enter the Borgia apartments, where some intriguing historic figures are depicted in the elaborately painted ceilings, designed but only partially executed by Pinturicchio at the end of the 15th century, and greatly retouched in later centuries. It's generally believed that Cesare Borgia murdered his sister Lucrezia's husband, Alphonse of Aragon, in the Room of the Sibyl. In the Room of the Saints, Pinturicchio painted his self-portrait in the figure to the left of the possible portrait of the architect Antonio da Sangallo. (His profession is made clear by the fact that he holds a T-square.) The lovely picture of St. Catherine of Alexandria is said to be a representation of Lucrezia Borgia herself. The resurrection scene in the next room, the Room of the Mysteries, offers excellent portraits of the kneeling Borgia pope, of Cesare Borgia (the soldier with a lance at the center), and of the young Francesco Borgia (the Roman at the soldier's side), who also was probably assassinated by Cesare.

In the frescoed exhibition halls that are part of the Vatican Museums, the Vatican Library displays precious illuminated manuscripts and documents from its vast collections. The Aldobrandini Marriage Room contains beautiful ancient frescoes of a Roman nuptial rite, named for their subsequent owner, Cardinal Aldobrandini. The Braccio Nuovo (New Wing) holds an additional collection of ancient Greek and Roman statues, the most famous of which is the Augustus of Prima Porta, in the fourth niche from the end on the left. It's considered a faithful likeness of the emperor Augustus, who was 40 years old at the time. Note the workmanship in the reliefs on his armor.

The Vatican Pinacoteca

Much more celebrated are the works on view in the Pinacoteca (Picture Gallery). These often world-famous paintings are almost exclusively of religious subjects and are arranged in chronological order, beginning with works of the 11th and 12th centuries. Room II has a marvelous Giotto triptych, painted on both sides, which formerly stood on the high altar in the old St. Peter's. In Room III you'll see Madonnas by the Florentine 15th-century painters Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi. The Raphael Room contains some of the master's greatest creations, including the exceptional Transfiguration, the Coronation of the Virgin, and the Foligno Madonna as well as the tapestries that Raphael designed to hang in the Sistine Chapel. The next room contains Leonardo's beautiful (though unfinished) St. Jerome and a Bellini Pietà. A highlight for many is Caravaggio's gigantic Deposition. In the courtyard outside the Pinacoteca you can admire the reliefs from the base of the Colonna di Marco Aurelio, the column in Piazza Colonna. A fitting finale to your Vatican visit can be found in the Museo Pio Cristiano (Museum of Christian Antiquities), where the most famous piece is the 3rd-century AD statue called the Good Shepherd, much reproduced as a devotional image.

For those interested in guided visits to the Vatican Museums, head to the Office of Guided Visits to Vatican Museums located on the Piazza San Pietro. Most tours run EUR 21.50 and need to be booked at least a day in advance by phone (06/69884676) or fax (06/69885100). Note that most of these tours are offered between 8 and 10 AM only.

Cost: EUR 14
Open: Mon.-Sat. 8:30-6 (last entrance at 4); closed Sun., except for last Sun. of month (when admission is free)
Metro: Cipro-Musei Vaticani

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