museum « Just Moving Around

Musei Vaticani belongs to one of those museums where one is simply overwhelmed with all the artifacts, sculptures and paintings gathered in a relatively small space. It would be difficult to recall all of them, not to mention describing or even make photos of all of them. It would be simply too much.

In Musei Vaticani there a couple of routes you can take. Quite often the sightseeing begins with the antique section. Inside there are many sculptures, busts, reliefs, mosaics and other ancient artifacts. There are almost no paintings. That one will be however more than balanced in other parts of the museum. Walls and ceilings are of antique look. In this section of the Vaticani museum one should simply concentrate on the historical value of that, what one sees. The following sections are more about the art, paintings or frescoes as well as craftsmanship. There are a number of chambers that look like an art gallery, so the focus is indeed on the paintings on display. But there are chambers where one has to look around and look up. The most impressive frescoes are probably in the Raphael’s Rooms – a series of chambers painted by Raphael. But there are also at least two passages alongside long but long corridors with frescoes painted on ceilings. These are a couple of hundreds meters long each: one is a corridor with tapestry maps and the other one a series of consecutive corridors in the Bibliotheca Vaticana (>>>).

Visiting this museum one has to be prepared to find oneself in a crowd – there are daily hundreds of tourists, who want to visit this place. As far as the entrance is concerned: there is the official queue, in which one has to wait a longer time (around an hour or so). One can also use a quicker queue that in practice means use a service of a person (or a guide), who has a reservation. But one has to pay more for the ticket. The latter seems to be an under the desk procedure, but it works.

A SELECTION OF MY PHOTO IMPRESSIONS: M U S E I V A T I C A N I (2015)

: Bibliotheca Vaticana

: Raphael’s Rooms

: Ancient floor mosaics

: An old ceiling decoration

: Ceiling decoration in a long but long room with maps

: Bibliotheca Vaticana

: A ceiling decoration

: Bibliotheca Vaticana

: Pottery. Ancient section

: Ancient section. Look at the crowds

: Mosaics, ancient section

: Egyptian section

: A ceiling decoration

: Just got out the Sistine Chapel

: A painted Egyptian mummy coffin

: Floor mosaics. Sala Rotonda

: A tapestry

: Ceiling decoration

: Window Carpentry, one of Raphael’s Rooms

: Tapestry

: A wall fresco, Sala di Constantino, Raphael’s Rooms

: Ancient section

: Statue of Zeus

: A painting in the modern art section

: Ancient mosaics

: A goddess in the Sala Rotonda

: A piece of the oldest ceiling decoration

: Sala Rotonda, a pantheon of gods and emperors. In front statues of the emperors Claudius (left) and Galba (right).

: A head of a painted Egyptian mummy coffin

: Raphael’s Rooms: The School of Athens

Index of posts on Vatican >>>

Some time ago during a visit in Musei Vaticani (>>>) that is totally overwhelming as far as the number of artifacts, artworks as well as handicraft all around are concerned in the second hour of a slow walk in the crowd I was simply too tired to admire that what we saw. There were moments I made photos just to be able to follow the route quietly later at home. My neck was tense because of the constant looking up onto the frescoes and other ceiling decorations. To be frank I did not prepare earlier for this visit, so I had no idea what was still ahead of us. For a couple of minutes we entered a great hall with frescoes all around. I did not want to speculate on its size, but this was altogether hundreds of meters. Then there was another room, and another. You could have only looked around, stopping for a while and catching the momentum.

We entered the so-called Raphael’s Rooms, a series of chambers decorated by the Italian Renaissance master Raphael, or his pupils. In fact the sightseeing route begins in the reverse order. Its starts in the Room of Constantine, a great hall designed for reception and official ceremony purposes. The frescoes are not by Raphael himself. Raphael died before he was able to finish them. The work was finished by artists, who worked in his workshop, upon the original Raphael’s design. The room is devoted to the Roman emperor Constantine, who was the first Christian Emperor of the ancient Rome.

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Only a small fraction of a wall fresco in the Room of Constantine, showing the Battle of Constantine against Maxentius, painted by the Raphael’s pupil Julio Romano.

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Later on, we visited a series of smaller chambers that had been designed to serve as pope’s private chambers that are told to be painted by Raphael himself. This can be however not fully true, as Raphael is told to have maintained one of the biggest workshops in Rome. Translated into English it means that he employed many talented people who made auxiliary work for him.

Raphael or Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483-1520), was one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance (alongside Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci). He is one of those artists who died young but left huge art heritage. Raphael’s Rooms are told to be one of his greatest achievements. On the picture left, you can see the Raphael’s self-portrait on display in the Louvre collection in Paris. But artists sometimes painted their self portraits inside works for which they have been commissioned. One of them (supposedly) is in the Raphael’s Rooms on the wall with a fresco depicting the School of Athens (>>>). In the middle of it there are two masterminds of the ancient times: Plato (to the left) an his pupil Aristotle (to the right). The head of Plato is a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, and that of Aristotle is indeed a Raphael’s self-portrait.

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The Raphael’s Rooms are decorated with frescoes all around. You can admire paintings on each wall and on all ceilings. Because of the crowds I made only a few photos directing my camera up from above people’s heads. However, on the Musei Vaticani web page, we can admire the empty Raphael’s rooms on pictures and in form of the virtual tour (>>>).

Below some other photo impressions.

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