STANZE DI RAFFAELLO
Built for Pope Nicholas V Parentucelli (1447/55) and
originally decorated by various artists including Piero della Francesca
In 1508 Pope Julius II Della Rovere (1503/13) summoned for a
new decoration Pietro Vannucci aka Pietro Perugino (about 1450/1523), Giovanni
Antonio Bazzi aka Sodoma (1477/1549), Baldassare Peruzzi (1481/1536) and Lorenzo
Lotto (about 1480/1556), but he later dismissed them all and gave the job to the
young artist known as Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael)
(1483/1520) who worked here in the years 1509/17
“In the commitment to the Vatican Stanze
Raphael summarized the ancient thought reworked in the light of the
humanistic-Christian doctrine. The complex iconographic program was probably
conceived by a scholar of the Roman Curia (the names, among others, of Ludovico
Ariosto and Celio Calcagnini have been mentioned) and intended to reaffirm the
central role of the church” (Andrea Pomella)
Sala di Costantino - Room of Constantine
VAULT
In the center “Triumph of Christianity”, “Personifications of Italian provinces and
continents”, “Virtues and symbolic attributes” with explanatory inscriptions
1582/85 by the Sicilian Tommaso Laureti (about
1530/1602) pupil of Sebastiano del Piombo
Tommaso Laureti conceived with Giambologna the Fountain of
Neptune in Bologna and painted also the Room of the Captains in the Capitoline Museums
“Laureti adopted here a neoraffaellesque
language very close to the first Roman Mannerism, also for cohesion with the
frescoes on the walls, although a few roundels with prospective papal emblems
are typical of his illusionist abilities. The central box with the Triumph of
the Cross over the Gentiles' idols, carried out under Sixtus V, was probably
adapted to the needs of the new pope and, in its essence symbolic entrusted
solely to the spatial structure, it effectively becomes the centerpiece of the
decoration” (Monica Grasso - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)
FLOOR
“Roman mosaic” of the third century from the Lateran area
WALLS
Completed in 1525, almost all decorated after the death of
Raphael by Giulio Pippi aka Giulio Romano
(1499/1546) with the help of Giovanni Francesco Penni
(about 1496/1528) and Raffaellino del Colle
(about 1490/1566)
“Figures of Popes enthroned and virtues”
“Apparition of the Cross to Constantine”
and “Victory of Constantine over Maxentius” are attributed to Giulio Romano
“It is curious to note that in recent years
Raphael is the first creator of two genres that cease after his death to
reappear again between late 1500 and early 1600: the still life and the battle.
The Battle of Milvian Bridge represents a type of painting that, in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth century, especially with Cavalier d'Arpino,
will become an archetype from which a genre will be born destined to great
success in Italy and throughout Europe” (Federico Zeri)
“Complex correlation of levels that increase
in accordance with their ambiguous broken rhythms and do not allow the viewer
to locate a fixed point of reference. The derivation from Roman iconography is
obvious (on the left Ludovisi Sarcophagus, in the center Relief with Trajan's
deeds from the Arch of Constantine), but the relationship with the old is
solved rhetorically speaking, according to an interpretation that plays down
the violence of action to recover the symbolic value of the whole scene” (Carlo
Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
“Part of the nature of Giulio Romano was the
not so common gift to represent the moving form, the interest in ancient
culture and his remarkable formal skill, characteristics that made him suitable
as any other for mythology and ancient history. His talent led him resolutely
on the path that he had been beating working actively to the frescoes of the
third room, i.e. pushing him towards powerful movement (...) and towards strong
effects of modeling in the interest of a powerfully accentuated
three-dimensionality” (Hermann Voss)
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