Raphael Rooms
Raphael Rooms | |
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Artist | Raphael |
Location | Apostolic Palace, part of Vatican Museums, Rome |
41°54′13″N 12°27′23″E / 41.903611°N 12.456389°E |
The four Raphael Rooms (Italian: Stanze di Raffaello) form a suite of reception rooms in the Apostolic Palace, now part of the Vatican Museums, in Vatican City. They are famous for their frescoes, painted by Raphael and his workshop. Together with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes, they are the grand fresco sequences that mark the High Renaissance in Rome.
The Stanze, as they are commonly called, were originally intended as a suite of apartments for
Running from east to west, as a visitor would have entered the apartment, but not following the sequence in which the Stanze were frescoed, the rooms are the Sala di Costantino ("Hall of Constantine"), the Stanza di Eliodoro ("Room of Heliodorus"), the Stanza della Segnatura ("Room of the Signatura"), and the Stanza dell'Incendio del Borgo ("The Room of the Fire in the Borgo").
After the death of Julius in 1513, with two rooms frescoed, Pope Leo X continued the program. Following Raphael's death in 1520, his assistants Gianfrancesco Penni, Giulio Romano and Raffaellino del Colle finished the project with the frescoes in the Sala di Costantino.
Scheme
The scheme of the works is as follows:
Room of the Signatura | Room of Heliodorus | Room of the Fire in the Borgo | Hall of Constantine |
---|---|---|---|
General view (I) | |||
General view (II) | |||
East wall | |||
The School of Athens | The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple | Battle of Ostia
|
The Vision of the Cross |
South wall | |||
Cardinal and Theological Virtues
|
The Mass at Bolsena | The Fire in the Borgo | The Battle of the Milvian Bridge |
West wall | |||
Disputation of the Holy Sacrament | The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila | The Coronation of Charlemagne | The Baptism of Constantine |
North wall | |||
The Parnassus | Deliverance of Saint Peter | The Oath of Leo III | The Donation of Constantine |
Ceiling | |||
Sala di Costantino
The largest of the twelve rooms is the Sala di Costantino ("Hall of Constantine"). Its paintings were not begun until Pope Julius and, indeed Raphael himself, had died. The room is dedicated to the victory of Christianity over paganism. Its frescoes represent this struggle from the life of the Roman Emperor
The Vision of the Cross
The fresco of The Vision of the Cross depicts the legendary story of a great cross appearing to Constantine as he marched to confront his rival Maxentius. The vision in the sky is painted with the words in Greek "Εν τούτω νίκα" ("By this, conquer", better known as the Latin In hoc signo vinces) written next to it.
The Battle of Milvian Bridge
The Battle of Milvian Bridge shows the battle that took place on October 28, 312, following Constantine's vision.
The Baptism of Constantine
The third painting in the sequence, The Baptism of Constantine, was most likely painted by Gianfrancesco Penni, and shows the emperor being baptised by Pope Sylvester I in the Lateran Baptistery at Rome. This follows the account of Constantine's baptism given in the Acts of Sylvester and the Liber Pontificalis, rather than the alternate deathbed version recounted in Eusebius's Life of Constantine. In The Baptism of Constantine, Pope Sylvester I has the physical features of Pope Clement VII (1523-1534), who ordered the completion of the Raphael Rooms. [1]
The Donation of Constantine
The final painting in the sequence, The Donation of Constantine, records an event that supposedly took place shortly after Constantine's baptism, and was inspired by the famous forged documents, incorporated into Gratian's Decretum, granting the Papacy sovereignty over Rome's territorial dominions.
Stanza di Eliodoro
The next room, going from East to West, is the Stanza di Eliodoro ("Room of Heliodorus"). Painted between 1511 and 1514, it takes its name from one of the paintings. The theme of this private chamber – probably an audience room – was the heavenly protection granted by Christ to the Church.[2] The four paintings are: The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, The Mass at Bolsena, The Meeting of Pope Leo I and Attila, and The Deliverance of Saint Peter from Prison. In the first two of these frescoes, Raphael flatteringly includes his patron, Pope Julius II, as participant or observer; the third, painted after Julius's death, includes a portrait of his successor, Leo X.
Raphael's style changed here from the Stanza della Segnatura. Instead of the static images of the Pope's library, he had dramatic narratives to portray, and his approach was to maximize the frescoes' expressive effects. He represented fewer, larger figures so that their actions and emotions have more direct impact on the viewers, and he used theatrical lighting effects to spotlight certain figures and heighten tension.
The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple
In The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple Raphael illustrated the biblical episode from
The Mass at Bolsena
The Mass at Bolsena depicts the story of a Bohemian priest who in 1263 ceased to doubt the doctrine of Transubstantiation when he saw the bread begin to bleed during its consecration at Mass. The cloth that was stained by the blood was held as a relic at the nearby town of Orvieto; Julius II had visited Orvieto and prayed over the relic in 1506.[4] The Pope is portrayed as a participant in the Mass and a witness to the miracle; he kneels to the right of the altar, with members of the Curia (also portraits) standing behind him. Raphael distinguishes the "real" thirteenth-century witnesses from those who are contemporaries of the pope by their degree of engagement in the event; the latter concentrate calmly on Julius kneeling at his devotions rather than responding to the miracle.
The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila
The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila depicts the storied parley between the
Deliverance of Saint Peter
The Deliverance of Saint Peter shows, in three episodes, how
Stanza della Segnatura
The Stanza della segnatura ("Room of the Signatura") was the first to be decorated by Raphael's frescoes. It was the study housing the library of Julius II, in which the
Disputation of the Holy Sacrament
The first composition Raphael executed between 1509 and 1510[7] was the Disputation of the Holy Sacrament, the traditional name for what is really an Adoration of the Sacrament. In the painting, Raphael created an image of the church, which is presented as spanning both heaven and earth.
The Parnassus
Raphael completed the second composition between 1509 and 1511.[8] It represents The Parnassus, the dwelling place of the god Apollo and the Muses and the home of poetry, according to classical myth. In the fresco Apollo and the Muses are surrounded by poets from antiquity and Raphael's own time.
The School of Athens
Between 1509 and 1511, Raphael also completed another work on the wall opposite the Disputa. This third painting,[9] entitled The School of Athens, represents the degrees of knowledge or the truth acquired through reason. The fresco's position as well as the philosophers' walk in direction of the Holy Sacrament on the opposite wall suggested the interpretation of the whole room as the movement from the classical philosophy to the true religion and from the pre-Christian world to Christianity.[10] It was meant to reside over the philosophical section of Pope Julius II's library. It is perhaps Raphael's most famous fresco.
The Cardinal Virtues
The two scenes on the fourth wall, executed by the workshop, and the lunette above it, containing the Cardinal Virtues, were painted in 1511. The Cardinal Virtues allegorically presents the virtues of
.Stanza dell'incendio del Borgo
The Stanza dell'incendio del Borgo was named for the Fire in the Borgo fresco which depicts
The Oath of Leo III
On December 23, 800
The Coronation of Charlemagne
The Coronation of Charlemagne shows how Charlemagne was crowned Imperator Romanorum on Christmas Day, 800.
Fire in the Borgo
The Fire in the Borgo shows an event that is documented in the Liber Pontificalis: a fire that broke out in the Borgo in Rome in 847. According to the Catholic Church, Pope Leo IV contained the fire with his benediction.
The Battle of Ostia
The Battle of Ostia was inspired by the
See also
- Index of Vatican City-related articles
- List of paintings by Raphael
Notes
- ^ "Raphael | Stanze in the Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican | Podere Santa Pia, Holiday house in the south of Tuscany". Archived from the original on 2021-05-09. Retrieved 2021-04-17.
- Marcia B. Hall, Cambridge, 2005, 111.
- ^ Jones and Penny, 117; Rowland, 112.
- ^ Jones and Penny, 117; John Pope-Hennessy, Raphael, London, 1970, 112; Rowland, 113.
- ^ Jones & Penny, 118–121; Pope-Hennessy, 115.
- ^ Jones & Penny, 118; Rowland,112–113.
- ^ Raphael, Phaidon Publishers, 1948, p. 24.
- ^ Raphael, Marcia B. Hall (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Raphael, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 195.
- ^ Jones and Penny, p. 74: "The execution of the School of Athens ... probably followed that of the Parnassus."
- ^ M. Smolizza, Rafael y el Amor. La Escuela de Atenas como protréptico a la filosofia, in Idea y Sentimiento. Itinerarios por el dibujo de Rafael a Cézanne, Barcelona, 2007, pp. 29–77
Further reading
- Rijser, David. “Tradition and Originality in Raphael: The Stanza Della Segnatura, the Middle Ages and Local Traditions.” The Quest for an Appropriate Past in Literature, Art and Architecture, edited by Karl A.E. Enenkel and Konrad A. Ottenheym, vol. 60, Brill, LEIDEN; BOSTON, 2019, pp. 106–126. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctvbqs5nk.11. Accessed 24 Mar. 2021.
External links
- The Stanze of the Vatican - with virtual tour
- Visual Tour of the Raphael Rooms, with identifications of figures in frescoes
- Raphael Rooms' 360x180 degree panorama virtual tour
- The Vatican: spirit and art of Christian Rome, a book from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on the Raphael Rooms (pp. 111–123)
- Media related to Raphael Rooms (Vatican Museums) at Wikimedia Commons
Preceded by Ecstasy of Saint Teresa |
Landmarks of Rome Raphael Rooms |
Succeeded by Sistine Chapel ceiling |