August 20, Vatican Museums

(feature picture above is in the Pine cone Courtyard, the start our visit)

The Hall of Sculptures

The bulk of what we will be seeing in this edition of the blog takes place in the  Pio Clementino Museum. This museum contains nine rooms and a courtyard. The museum takes its name from two popes; Clement XIV who established the museum, and Pius VI, the pope who brought the museum to completion. Clement XIV came up with the idea of creating a new museum in Innocent VIII’s Belvedere Palace and started the refurbishment work. I do not have pictures from all of the rooms but will share those that I have.

The Octagonal Court
This court has been in existence prior to there being a Vatican Museum or Pio Clementino Museum and has been home to many classical statues. Despite many renovations over the years statues such as the Laocoön and the Belvedere Apollo, are in the places they have held since the early 1500s.

Roman River God

Lacoon

The Hall of Animals
The Hall of the Animals was set up under Pope Pius VI (1775-1799) with antique works of art, often much restored and sometimes completely re-worked, with the aim of creating a ‘stone zoo’.

Meleager in Hall of Animals

The Round Hall

Bronze Statue of Hercules

The construction of this large hall with a hemispherical vault imitating that of the Pantheon was completed in 1779 according to a project of Michelangelo Simonetti. The walls carry a series of niches for displaying colossal statues, between which are half-columns which support outsize busts. The floor is an amazing 18^th century assemblage of mosaics from the first decades of the 3^rd century A.D. which were found at Otricoli and at Sacrofano. At the centre of the room is a huge red porphyry basin which has a circumference of 13 metres. The basin must once have embellished one of the large public spaces of imperial Rome.

 

From Nero’s Golden House Floor is over 1700 years old

The Belvedere Torso

The Greek Cross Hall
This hall was designed and built by the architect Michelangelo Simonetti during the pontificate of Pope Pius VI Braschi (1775-1799). It came to constitute the entrance vestibule to the Pio Clementino Museum. The hall is dominated by the presence of two huge porphyry sarcophagi. Just as prominent in the centre of the floor is a mosaic with a bust of Athena.

Sarcophagus of St Helena from the 4th century made from Imperial Porphry

Sarcophagi from the 4th century made from Imperial Porphry

Bust of Athena in Mosaics

Gallery of the Candelabra

Note the Candelabra beside the columns

Arranged under Pope Pius VI Braschi between 1785 and 1788, the gallery was completely renovated during the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII Pecci (1878-1903) and is how you see it as you walk through it today.  This gallery is named because of the very large marble candelabra with the marble columns. There are many statues exhibited through six sections but what really caught my eye is the beautiful ceilings stretching along the gallery.  Domenico Torti and Ludwig Seitz are responsible for the beautiful ceiling paintings.

 

Greek Goddess Artemis

St Thomas is shown kneeling and offering his works to the Roman Catholic Church.

Gallery of Maps

By Alvesgaspar – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43522638

The Gallery of Maps is called the Galleria delle carte geografiche in Italian and is located in the Vatican Papal Palace. These maps were based on drawings by Ignazio Danti a Dominican Italian friar, mathematician, astronomer, cosmographer and geographer born as Pellegrino Rainaldi Danti in Perugia in 1536.
The galley was commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII in 1580 . The completion of the work on the gallery took Danti three years (1580–1583). Today the gallery consists of 40 panels which go along the 120 m gallery.
Once again I was very taken with the ceilings and paid more attention to them then I did to the maps. The picture depicting Italy is not my own picture, rather one I am using with permission by the photographer, Alvesgaspar. This picture is featured on Wikimedia.org.

 

The Room of the Immaculate Conception   
This room is very close to the Raphael Rooms and as a result at least one other artist declined the commission not wanting to be compared to Raphael. The frescos in this room were painted by the very fine artist Francesco Podesti (1800 –1895) nearly three centuries after Raphael’s painting were completed.

Francesco Podesti, Proclamation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception

The Raphael Rooms (Stanze di Raffaello)

Room of the Segnatura ceiling,

The Raphael Rooms are are four rooms that were painted by Raphael and his pupils from 1508 to 1524. These rooms along with Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel are the grand frescoes of the High Renaissence. The Raphael Rooms are one of the most visited parts of the Vatican museums and they have a grand history which is significant for the Roman Catholic Church.
Originally painted as a suite of apartments for Pope Julius II, the were occupied by popes from 1507 to 1585.

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 Museums of the Vatican Apostolic Library (Musei della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

The Hall of Addresses

The Hall of Addresses

“Transportation of the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square” 1590 by Giovanni Guerra (1544/1618) and Cesare Nebbia (1536/1614)

Pauline’s Room 1, “Episodes from the Life of Paul V” 1620 by G.B. Ricci (about 1550/1624

 

The Spiral staircase is located in the Vatican Museums was designed by Giuseppe Momo in 1932.

 

As we started our tour essentially in the Pine Cone Courtyard, we finished exiting down to street level via this spiral staircase.

All for now,
Hannah, Jill & Kerry
(written from home September 1, 2019