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THE VATICAN MUSEUMS
Kamlesh Tripathi
The Vatican Museums are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy over the centuries. This includes several of the best-known Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world. The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display, and currently employ 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.
The Vatican Museums are exceptionally important because of the richness and prestige of the masterpieces brought together under various popes over the centuries, as well as for their illustrious setting. The museums are made up of a group of grand buildings and countless rooms, salons, museums, galleries, libraries, chapels, corridors, courtyards and gardens rich with art treasures of every type. From the Renaissance onward, great artists have left their immortal mark here. The entrance to the Vatican Museums is on Viale del Vaticano, a historic avenue.
CHIARAMONTI MUSEUM:
This museum was founded by Pope Pius VII Chiaramonti (1800-1823) and comprises the Corridor, Lapidary Gallery, and Braccio Nuovo (New Wing), all in neoclassical style. The Corridor is flanked by statues, busts, sarcophagi, reliefs, etc.: in all about eight hundred Greco-Roman works. The Lapidary Gallery holds more than 5000 pagan and Christian inscriptions. In the Braccio Nuovo is the statue of Augustus, found in 1863. After the battle of Actium, Augustus brought an immense amount of Egyptian treasures to Rome; among them was the colossal group of The Nile (the Statue of the Nile God).
MUSEO PIO CLEMENTINO:
The Museo Pio Clementino takes its name from its great and generous founders, Popes Clement XIV and Pius VI, who lived between the 18th and 19th centuries.
Across the vestibule of the Vatican Museums is the Gabinetto dell’Apoxyomenos. At the centre is the athlete from Lysippos (Apoxyomenos), a marble copy of a bronze original that Agrippa brought from Greece. In the Octagonal Courtyard of the Belvedere, classical statues are displayed in four gabinetti (recesses): Gabinetto del Laocoonte – The exceptional Laocoon group was discovered among the ruins of the Baths of Titus in 1506. Gabinetto dell’ Apollo – The statue of Apollo was found in Grottaferrata during the papacy of Julius II, who acquired it for the Vatican. The Gabinetto del Perseo – It contains the only three modern works in the courtyard: Perseus with the head of Medusa and the two boxers Creugas and Damoxenes, all by Antonio Canova (1757- 1822). Gabinetto dell’Hermes – The statue of Hermes is a copy of a 4th-century BC original by Praxiteles.
The Animal Room contains reproductions of many animals in marble and alabaster. Of particular interest is the statue of Meleager.
The Gallery of the Statues contains many important works, including the Apollo Sauroctonos, which is a copy of a work by Praxiteles, and the Sleeping Ariadne, from the Hellenistic period.
The Gallery of the Busts follow, made up mostly of Roman portraits. The bust of the young Augustus is the highlight of the gallery.
In the Gabinetto delle Maschere (Mask Room) are the gracious statue of Aphrodite and the well-known Venus of Knidos, perhaps the most beautiful of all Greek sculptures.
The Sala delle Muse (Hall of the Muses) is decorated with Corinthian Columns, and busts and statues of mythological figures. In the centre of the room is the famous statue (1st century B.C.) of the Torso, signed by the Athenian Apollonius. In the Sala Rotonda (Circular Hall), the magnificent porphyry vase, four meters in diameter, is without doubt the richest and most sumptuous piece in this gallery. The pavement mosaic was found at Otricoli, and the colossal statue of Antinous was brought from Palestrina. The Hall of the Greek Cross, houses two porphyry sarcophagi which contain the bodies of St. Helena and St. Constance, daughter of the emperor Constantine.
THE LIBRARY
The “Vatican Library” is the most important in Europe for the antiquity and richness of manuscripts and rare books. Several examples are on display in the sumptuous Sala Sistina, including the Codex of the Bible from the 4th century; four examples of Virgil from the 3rd to the 5th century; the Gospel of Matthew of the 6th century; the famous palimpsest containing a large part of De Repubblica by Cicero. This 5th century manuscript was scraped in the 7th century in order to be reused for the commentary “Super Psalmos” by St. Augustine, written here and restored to its original condition in the 9th century. At the back of the library, in a room on the right, is a precious collection of ancient frescos among which the most important is the Aldobrandini Wedding (from the Augustan period), which represents the preparations for the wedding between Alexander the Great and Rossana.
THE STAGE OF RAPHAEL:
As soon as he came to Rome, Raphael was introduced to Pope Julius II by Bramante. Some rooms above the Borgia Apartment had already been frescoed by Perugino and others, but Julius decided to have them scraped and painted again by the young Raphael. The first Stanza, called the Sala di Costantino, represents the legendary life of Constantine. The frescos were executed according to Raphael’s designs after his death. The first fresco, The Apparition of the Cross, represents Constantine’s defeat of Massenzio (312) and was painted by Giulio Romano just after the death of the master. The second Stanza (Stanza d’Eliodoro) was painted in 1511-14; its name comes from the fresco depicting the Chastisement of Heliodorus. The spirit of the subject in the room was intended to glorify the papacy. Above the window is the scene of the Miracle at Bolsena, where, in 1264, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist was proved to a doubting priest by a miracle. The Liberation of St. Peter from prison was skillfully set around the window, with the three different qualities of light particularly well portrayed. The Meeting of Attila is an allusion to battles with France. In the third Stanza is Raphael’s first work, the Dispute of the Holy Sacrament, finished in 1509. The subject of this wonderful fresco is the glory of the Eucharist. On the opposite wall is the School of Athens, representing the celebration of reason, which contrasts to the exaltation of faith on the opposite wall. Above the window is Mount Parnassus, the mythic Greek mountain of the gods.
The last Stanza, with frescos painted by Raphael and his followers during the papacy of Leo (1514-17), is named after the fresco entitled Fire in the Borgo. It represents the fire in the city that was miraculously extinguished by Pope Leo IV.
THE VATICAN PICTURE GALLERY:
The pictures exhibited in the Vatican Picture Gallery are of exceptional interest: they are part of a collection begun by Pope Pius VI (1775-1799), which underwent various removals before being worthily housed in this functional building. Today, the Picture Gallery contains about five hundred works between pictures and tapestries, arranged in the fifteen rooms which compose it according to chronological order: from the Byzantines and early Italians of 1100-1300, whose works are exposed in the 1st room, we arrive, in fact, to the artists of 1700 and the beginning of 1800. However, the nucleus of the collection is made up of the works of the greatest masters of the Italian Renaissance, of a really inestimable value.
Written and posted by Kamlesh Tripathi
Author, Poet, & Columnist
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https://kamleshsujata.wordpress.com
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