Vatican Museums

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Museums and Galleries

Egyptian Museum

Detail of Egyptian fresco(Museo Egizio). In 1839 Pope Gregory XVI Cappellari founded this museum which houses many sculptures of queens, pharaohs, gods and goddesses from Tivoli where Hadrian had filled his Villa grounds with statues reminding him of his lost love Antinous.

In the third room, there is a stunning sculpture of Osiris which represents handsome young Antinous who drowned during a midnight dip in the Nile and was elevated to deity. Also famous are the mummies, the black granite throne of Rhamses II (13C BC) and the gigantic statue of his mother Queen Tuaa.


Pio Clementino Museum

(Museo Pio Clementino). Museum of Greco-Roman Sculpture.


Cabinet of the Apoxyomenos

(Gabinetto dell’Apoxyomenos). Named after the fabulous central sculpture of an athlete scraping his body with a “strigil”, to take off excess oil from the body after exercise or a combat (4C AD Roman copy of 1C BC original).

This suite housed Leonardo from 1513-1516, guest of Pope Leo X Medici who expected the artist/scientist to discover how to make gold.

Leonardo, secretly pursuing his anatomical drawings, was evicted by the irate pontiff for bringing prostitutes here - for gynecological studies.


Octagonal Belvedere Courtyard

(Cortile Ottagonale del Belvedere) (Room VIII) Two world masterpieces: Laocoön and Apollo Belvedere.


Laocoön

(Laocoonte) (Greek, school of Rhodes 1C AD). This father and two sons show the most realistic agony possible in their heroic battle against giant snakes. It marks the transition between Greek "idealized" sculpture and Roman "realistic" sculpture.

Laocoön

History

Laocoön1506. Michelangelo, learning that these figures had been discovered in a field near the Colosseum, rushed there and immediately knew he was looking at what Pliny in the 1C AD had rated "above all painted and sculpted works." The field was above the Golden House of Nero (see Domus Aurea), who had the sculpture in his collection. Michelangelo used the father as a model for such works as his wrathful Moses. Pope Julius II della Rovere, a godfather of the Renaissance, paid a fortune for the figures and had them reassembled here, in his private courtyard. Nine years later the victorious King of France, François I (who later lured Leonardo to his court) demanded this sculpture as a spoil of war. But Julius' successor, Leo X Medici, unwilling to part with it, secretly had it copied. In fact it did not leave until Napoleon brought it to Paris, from which it returned after his defeat.

1905. Archeologist Ludwig Pollack found an arm he recognized as being a missing part of Laocoön in a Rome antique shop. This totally changed the sculpture that had for four centuries been incorrectly assembled.
Don't miss the nearby photo of the previous reconstruction. You choose.



Apollo Belvedere

Roman copy of a Greek statue of 4C BC. An ideal of masculine beauty as well as realism in rendering the drapery. The Renaissance artists considered this the perfection for which they should strive.


Pinacoteca

This superb art collection is largely neglected because of the fame of the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael Rooms.

The first seven rooms present the first flowering of the Renaissance in different regions of Italy.

Room VIII has world class Raphael works including the “Coronation of the Virgin” (1505), “The Madonna of Foligno” (1512) and his last work “Transfiguration” (1520) as well as his tapestries for the Sistine Chapel.

Room IX includes the only Leonardo painting in Rome, his unfinished “St. Jerome” and also the fine “Pietà” of the Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini.


Map Gallery

Pigna Courtyard(Galleria delle Carte Geografiche). Galleries of the Candelabra, Tapestries and Maps.

Go up the staircase to this long corridor lined with windows that was originally an open walkway between Vatican palaces. Between 2000 year-old candlesticks you have a view down on the central Pigna Courtyard with its giant 1C AD pinecone.

On the other side is a rare view of the Vatican Gardens with their soaring trees, peaceful pavilion and rolling lawns.

In the central gallery of this corridor are tapestries representing the life of Christ. (1524-31)- school of Raphael, made in Brussels. Note the elephants and camels, based on examples in the Pope's private zoo.

Be sure not to miss the “Supper in Emmaus”, with the mouthwatering wine cooler lower right. Note how Christ's eyes appear to follow you as you move past.

The maps frescoed on the walls of this gallery by Ignazio and Antonio Danti (1580-83) showing the Pope's gorgeous properties and Venice are unforgettable.


Gregorian Profane Museum

(Museo Gregoriano Profano). Mosaics: vermicelli mosaics, made with tiny circles cut from thin glass rods, were used in 2C AD for still lives showing food and drink at Roman banquets: squid, asparagus, dates.
Marble mosaics at their best are in the Gregorian Profane Museum.


Room of the Asaraton Mosaic (2C AD). This type of mosaic, representing part of a dining room floor, is a whimsical Greek genre, which the Romans loved to copy.

"After the meal", “trompe l'oeil” of food scraps littering the floor after a meal. Don't miss the mouse!


Viale Vaticano (Map A2)

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