Vatican Museums colossal collection of the most famous works of art
Astonishing Vatican Museums a must-visit in Rome
Laocoon and his sons
Vatican Museums most renowned works of art
A must-visit place in Rome are the Vatican Museums which exhibit some of the world’s most renowned and famous works of art.
Displays of religious artifacts and decorative arts, crucifix, chalice and paintings depicting the crucifixion
The collection contains over 70,000 works are housed in the museums within the Apostolic Palace, which contains the Papal Apartments, offices of the Catholic church, private and public chapels, the Vatican Museums, and the Vatican Library.
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Together they represent one of the largest museum complexes and collections in the world.
Treasures of ancient civilizations
Founded in the sixteenth century, its collection of sacred art and artefacts of historical, cultural, and artistic value of art is uniquely important and awesome.
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Barbara Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums explains its current mission:
“To present, preserve and share that extraordinary legacy of culture, history and beauty that the Roman Pontiffs have collected and preserved for centuries: this is the mission of the Vatican Museums today.”
Ancient pottery from the Middle East, Palestine and Jordan
The history of Christian art and architecture was fostered during the reign of Emperor Constantine.
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In 313 AD, he made Christianity legal with the Edict of Milan. Christians were then given the right to construct places for worship and were freed from previous constraints on their religious activities.
Ceiling fresco depicting Apollo and Muses, by Tommaso Conca, decorating Sala delle Muse, Room of the Muses
Constantine was responsible for building the first basilica in 324 on Vatican Hill; it later became Saint Peter’s Basilica.
Successive Popes collected and commissioned works of art
Thereafter and following on nearly two-thousand years of the papacy, successive Popes created the Vatican Museums through the building of the Apostolic Palace, and they gathered and commissioned works of art that depict the history of humankind and the story of its redemption.
Galleries in the Vatican Museums
Millions of visitors roam through the museums each year, discovering and enjoying many masterpieces.
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Renowned works and priceless treasures that are part of many different collections of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman and Christian art and artefacts.
Egyptian antiquities
Ancient paintings, decorative arts and ethnological and historical works are housed alongside modern and contemporary artworks.
In the Niccoline Chapel, sumptuous wall decorations are attributed to the Dominican Fra Angelico. These frescoes were the great works by the masterpiece Florentine painter in the fifteenth-century.
The Gallery of Maps
The Gallery of Maps hosts forty panels of topographical maps of Italy – many which are still accurate.
Extensive ancient statues of Greek and Roman origin
The heart of the collection are the ancient statues of Greek and Roman origin, extensively displayed in the Gallery of Statues and the Hall of Busts.
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The Raphael Rooms, which used to be the private apartment of Pope Julius II, host some of the master painter’s iconic works.
The Resurrection of Our Lord, a tapestry after a cartoon of Raphael’s school, 1524-1531
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was a master Renaissance artist and a contemporary of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
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The Raphael Rooms are home to frescoes that contain four grand paintings representing the themes of Philosophy, Poetry, Theology and Law.
The School of Athens (1509) Plato walks alongside Aristotle, representing the theme of Philosophy
Raphael’s masterpiece, The School of Athens, is his most famous painting. Many great Greek philosophers are found among the twenty-one featured in the painting, with Plato and Aristotle placed in the center of the scene.
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The ultimate destination for visitors is the Sistine Chapel. The flow of visitors walking through the museums is strategically organised so that everyone passes through the chapel on their way out.
Virgin and Child, created by Joseph Bertini and Caesar Ponti
After passing through many long corridors and halls of what seems like an endless number of sculptures, tapestries and frescoes, the entry to the Sistine Chapel is narrow and very crowded with people trying to cram into the small dark space.
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The chapel is revered, and silence is requested and expected. Inside the enclosed and sometimes claustrophobia space, visitors whisper in awe and try to temper their delight to be standing below one of the greatest works of art of all time, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, as they marvel at the frescoes painted by Michelangelo.
Roman imperial portraits
In person, the ceilings are magnificent. Seeing the various pictorials of biblical stories as flat images pales in comparison to seeing them in real life and in situ.
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The colours are vivid and fresh. Innovative for its time, Michelangelo rendered the characters in perspective, vastly more three dimensional than in paintings by his contemporaries.
The Fall of Man, a panel on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, between 1508 and 1512, Michelangelo
The characters are larger than life, fleshy, full and muscular. They have weight and the gravitas of sculptures.
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Michelangelo’s frescoes tell the story of the creation, and his depiction of the last judgment on the alter wall tells the story of salvation.
The Creation of Adam / Man, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, between 1508 and 1512, Michelangelo
Other biblical stories from the old and new testaments were painted on the wall underneath the ceiling by other great Renaissance painters, such as Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Cosimo Rosselli and Domenico Ghirlandaio.
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Together, these images are considered to be one of the most striking collections of sacred imagery and biblical tales in one location.
Michelangelo created sculptures and paintings for the church
Michelangelo was the creative genius chosen to decorate the ceiling at the age of thirty-three. Although he had trained as a painter, he produced mostly sculptures during his early career.
Sculpture gallery
He had gained prominence as an artist with his masterpiece sculpture, Pietà, created and finished within one year when he was only twenty-four years old in 1499.
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The sculpture was a sensation, which he then followed up with his iconic and more fabulous seventeen-foot-high David, finished in 1504
Sala degli Animali, Hall of Animals, with ancient Roman marble statues depicting various animals and mythological creatures
He was a renowned sculptor by the time Pope Julius II commanded him to turn his talent to painting and decorating the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
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Over a four-year period, Michelangelo created more than 300 figures on the ceiling. As a sculptor, Michelangelo approached painting differently from other painters. He did not paint static figures.
Head of Medusa, 2nd Century AD
His depiction of God was of one who was engaged dynamically in the act of creation.
Michelangelo focused on the movements of figures within a panoramic space and emphasized the activity and the narratives.
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Although the Sistine Chapel is known synonymously with Michelangelo’s masterpiece work on the ceiling, it remains still the the seat of the conclave. Since 1492, it has been the site where the College of Cardinals congregate and elect the new Pope.
Statuette of Sleeping Cupid, often used in funerary scenes, 3rd Century AD
Exiting from the Sistine Chapel, galleries of art and artefacts continue until the gallery of the collection of contemporary art is reached.
Not as well-known as the iconic works by Renaissance master artists, the Vatican Museum’s collection of contemporary art is also significant.
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The collection was a result of Pope Paul VI’s desire to reinstate the Church’s prominence in contemporary culture and as a patron of modern art. The collection covers the end of the nineteenth century up to the early twentieth century and consists of around 8,000 works.
Pieta, 1889 Vincent van Gogh
The collection includes works by important artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse. An entire space was dedicated to the works by Henri Matisse, thanks to an extraordinary donation by the artist’s son, Pierre Matisse.
L’ Arbre de Vie, 1949, Henri Matisse
For anyone interested in art and history, a visit to the Vatican Museums in Vatican City is essential.
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A full-day’s visit is not enough to take in the history and significance of all its treasures; but it is a good start.
Text & Photos Cammy Yiu
