What to See in the Vatican Museums

Witnessing first hand some of the most iconic artworks ever painted is a spine-tingling experience.

The absolute highlight of the Vatican Museums is the Sistine Chapel, where the awe-inspiring works of Michelangelo dominate every surface. But the chapel was actually built in the 1470s by Pope Sixtus IV when Michelangelo was just a young boy, designed to function as both the private papal chapel and an impregnable defensive fortress deep within the Vatican walls. Sixtus called upon the most renowned Florentine and Umbrian painters of the day (including Perugino and Botticelli) to decorate the chapel’s side walls with frescoes depicting the lives of Moses and Christ.

25 years later, Julius II decided to outdo his predecessor by having Michelangelo redecorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, at this time covered with a depiction of the starry night sky. Michelangelo thought of himself as a sculptor rather than a painter and was reluctant to accept the commission, but what he came up with between 1508-1512 amazed his contemporaries and has continued to amaze viewers ever since. More than 300 enormous figures are portrayed across the vault in almost every pose imaginable.

Massive prophets, sibyls, and naked figures known as ignudi frame the ceiling, while nine frescoes running along the main space relate the Book of Genesis, from the Creation of the World to Noah’s Ark. At the very center of the scheme is the Creation of Adam, where a grey-bearded God sparks life into his beautiful human creation through the merest brush between their perfectly manicured fingertips.

Raphael’s marvellous frescoes, including the School of Athens, provide a unique insight into the culture of the High Renaissance.

If anyone can rival Michelangelo’s status as first amongst equals in the pantheon of Renaissance art, it’s Raphael. Amazingly precocious, by the time he was in his 20s the Umbrian master was churning out masterpieces at will, and his paintings were in high demand all over Italy and beyond. Unlike the cantankerous Michelangelo, Raphael was at ease rubbing shoulders with princes and popes.

His youthful good looks and easy charm made him a natural at court, and he soon rose to a position of prominence in the Vatican. Not content with commissioning Michelangelo to redecorate his private chapel, the insatiable Pope Julius II decided that his own apartments weren’t up to scratch, and called on Raphael and his workshop to adorn them with frescoes.

Julius loathed his predecessor Alexander VI with a passion, and relished the opportunity to upstage the beautiful frescoes that Pinturicchio had painted in the notorious Borgia pope’s apartments just 10 years earlier. Raphael and his assistants handsomely repaid his faith, decorating the four stunning rooms known today as the Sala di Costantino, the Stanza di Eliodoro, the Stanza della Segnatura and the Stanza dell’Incendio del Borgo.

As Michelangelo and Raphael differed in their personalities, so they did in their art. Where Michelangelo’s figures are monumental and muscular, Raphael’s are graceful and refined. His love of harmony can be best appreciated in the Stanza della Segnatura’s iconic School of Athens. Here the philosophers Plato and Aristotle debate the nature of the universe in a massive classical building surrounded by other philosophers of the classical world.

Raphael painted the philosophers with the faces of his contemporaries, linking Renaissance thought with ancient pagan ideals: Plato bears the features of Leonardo da Vinci, whilst the geometer Euclid (clutching a chalkboard) has been cast as Raphael’s friend Bramante, whose own grasp of geometry was fundamental to Renaissance architecture. Heraclitus meanwhile, lounging on the steps in distinctive leather boots, is probably none other than Michelangelo. The story goes that Raphael was so impressed by what he saw when he snuck in to the still unfinished Sistine Chapel that he felt compelled to add this last-minute homage to his rival.

One portrait is not in doubt – the dapper young man in the green cap on the right of the scene who locks his gaze on ours is Raphael himself.

Some of the most important works of ancient sculpture have been on show here for over 500 years, inspiring generations of artists including Michelangelo and Raphael.

The Vatican isn’t all about Christian art. Despite their pagan subject matter, the Renaissance popes were also avid collectors of classical sculptures, and the ancient marbles that line the halls and fill the courtyards of the Vatican palace had a massive influence on developing ideals of naturalism and proportion. The core of this collection is in the so-called Octagonal Courtyard, a beautiful sculpture-garden founded by  Julius II in the first decade of the 1500s. When the idea of creating a museum in the Vatican first surfaced in the late 1700s, the Octagonal Courtyard became the centrepiece of the Pio-Clementino museum, named after the popes responsible for its founding – Pius VI and Clement XIV.

The Laocoön, an incredibly dramatic Hellenistic sculpture depicting a battle between a Trojan priest and his sons against divinely sent sea-snakes during the Greek-Trojan war, is a masterpiece of psychological intensity that was described in glowing terms as one of the ancient world’s greatest statues by the classical writer Pliny. When it was rediscovered buried in a muddy vineyard at the start of the 16th century, the Pope resolved to have it hauled to the Vatican for his personal collection where it remains to this day.

Here too is the Apollo Belvedere, another of Julius’ prized possessions. The god originally held a bow, and has been captured just after firing off an arrow with graceful ease. Apollo’s flawless form was considered to be the apogee of classical ideals of bodily perfection during the Renaissance, and by the 18th century was the most famous sculpture in the world.

Don’t miss the Belvedere Torso in the nearby Hall of Muses, a fragmentary seated male body whose amazing musculature and twisting form had a profound impact on the art of Michelangelo. According to legend Pope Julius asked Michelangelo to restore the blasted torso, but the sculptor declined, arguing that it was perfect as it was. The remainder of the sculpture collection houses a cornucopia of ancient masterpieces, from a remarkably individualistic and immediately recognisable portrait of Julius Caesar, known as the Chiaramonti Caesar, to the priceless 4th-century red porphyry sarcophagi of Helena and Costantia, mother and daughter of the ancient empire’s first Christian emperor, Constantine.

This whirling tangle of bodies changed the story of art.

30 years after completing the ceiling, Michelangelo returned to the Sistine Chapel one final time to take on another herculean task. Between 1536 and 1541, Pope Paul III convinced the aging artist to decorate the massive altar wall of the chapel with a fresco depicting the terrifying final moments of life on earth according to Christian teaching – The Last Judgement.

A grave Christ who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Apollo Belvedere dispenses judgement upon the living and the dead, surrounded by the saints of the church. The saved are carried towards heaven by angels, whilst the damned are dragged screaming down to hell. The horror inscribed into the features of one figure who covers his face as he is pulled downwards is genuinely terrifying. Look out too for the skeletons at the bottom being re-clothed in flesh, St. Bartholomew holding a portrait of Michelangelo in his sagging flayed skin, and the figure of Charon, the gatekeeper to hell, who Michelangelo painted with the features of his detractor Biagio da Cesena.

For Michelangelo the nude bodies of the fresco were intended to showcase the perfection of God as a divine creator, but their nakedness was controversial from the beginning. After the artist’s death the offending genitals were covered over for the sake of modesty by Daniele da Volterra, and the work came within a whisker of being destroyed entirely. Despite the controversy, the unique twisting and muscular style Michelangelo pioneered in the Last Judgement would have a seismic impact on artists for generations to come.

Pinturicchio’s vibrant frescoes vividly demonstrate the courtly charm of the Renaissance in rooms rich with the dark history of the Borgias.

The Raphael rooms weren’t the only apartments in the Vatican to receive the full-on Renaissance treatment. A decade earlier, the renowned Umbrian master Pinturicchio painted a series of frescoes along the walls of the suite of rooms in which Julius’ hated predecessor, the notorious Spanish pope Rodrigo Borgia (Alexander VI) lived during his reign between 1492 and 1503. Pinturicchio had impressed as a young painter during the first campaign of decorations in the Sistine Chapel in the 1480s, and by the time Borgia called him to his side a decade later he was one of Italy’s most sought-after artists. P

agan and Christian themes mix freely in his dazzling frescoes, with inspirations deriving from ancient Roman, Egyptian and Jewish art and culture. The distinctive ‘grotesque’ (grotteschi) pattern of decoration on the lower walls was inspired by the ancient Roman decorations found during this period in Nero’s rediscovered Golden House – Pinturicchio himself undertook dangerous night-time expeditions into the cruel emperor’s ruined subterranean villa, and he wasted no time imitating what he saw there in his work at the Vatican.

If you were hooked by the intrigue and plotting in the Showtime TV series The Borgias, this is your chance to come face-to-face with the real protagonists. But did Rodrigo really look like Jeremy Irons? Keep your eyes peeled for a portrait of the kneeling Pope gazing at the miracle of Christ’s Resurrection in the Room of Mysteries and find out.

Hidden in the background of this fresco behind Crist’s empty tomb is one of the most interesting details in Renaissance art – the first ever European depictions of native Americans. Columbus had reached the New World just two years before work on the apartments began. Pinturicchio also depicted other members of the clan disguised as historical or religious personae in these frescoes. In the Disputation of St. Catherine of Alexandria in the Room of Saints, the model for the young saint was probably none other than the beautiful Lucrezia Borgia, the Pope’s famously hedonistic daughter, while her brother Cesare appears in the luxurious vestments of an emperor. In a nearby image of the Virgin and Child meanwhile, it seems that the mother of God herself bears the features of Giulia Farnese, Rodrigo’s mistress.

The Borgia Apartments come just after the Raphael Rooms on the Museum itinerary, so make sure to pause here to compare the two Papal suites.

Discover a largely forgotten side of Renaissance art practice, and witness an amazing example of moving perspective

As you make your way from the ancient sculpture galleries and towards the Hall of Maps, stop off in the Tapestry Gallery. Tapestries were highly prized during the Renaissance both for the eye-watering expense of their materials and the massive amount of skilled labour that went into their production. The massive tapestries woven by a crack team of Belgian craftsmen to the designs of Raphael for the Sistine Chapel were amongst the most revered and expensive works produced in the Italian Renaissance, and you can still see them in the Vatican’s Pinacoteca.

They caused such a buzz that pope Clement VII decided to commission another series of tapestries from the Brussels workshop of Pieter van Aelst, depicting scenes from Christ’s youth and the dramatic events of his Resurrection. The depth of emotion picked out in the threads of wool, silk and precious metals is incredible.

Most spectacular of all is the massive tapestry portraying Christ’s Resurrection, where Christ stands proudly confident in the centre of the tapestry atop the broken slab that had once closed his tomb, as soldiers and bystanders scatter in panic. Keep your eyes fixed on those of Christ as you walk past; in a miracle of illusionism, his gaze follows you as you make your way down the gallery.

This beautiful space once formed the centerpiece of Donato Bramante’s famous Belvedere Courtyard.

The enormous bronze pinecone that gives its name to the Pinecone Courtyard was probably originally cast as the centrepiece of a fountain in the centre of the ancient city, possibly part of a temple to the Egyptian god Isis, and dates from the second century AD. It was found in the Campo Marzio in the Middle Ages and for centuries was positioned in the atrium of Old St. Peter’s basilica.

It was moved to the Vatican in 1608, where it adorned Donato Bramante’s famous Belvedere Courtyard (the current Pinecone courtyard is only about half of Bramante’s original design). The beautiful bronze peacocks that accompany the Pinecone are now reproductions, but you can still see the originals in the Braccio Nuovo wing of the Museums nearby. For the ancient Romans peacocks were a symbol of immortality, and these bronze birds were originally cast for the tomb of the emperor Hadrian (today Castel Sant’Angelo), before being moved to old St. Peter’s to keep the Pinecone company.

Check out the modernist masterpiece by the hand of Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro that faces the ancient pinecone from the centre of the courtyard. A rotating bronze globe, the iconic Sphere Within Sphere and has sister works across the globe – from United Nations headquarters in New York to Trinity College, Dublin.

Giuseppe Momo’s double-helix stairwell is an engineering marvel.

If anything sums up the special nature of the Vatican Museums, it’s the fact that even the exit ramp is a spectacular work of art in its own right. The magnificent spiral staircase was designed by Giuseppe Momo in 1932, inspired by a famous staircase built by Donato Bramante in 1505 linking the Belvedere Palace to the outside world (the Bramante staircase is not usually open to the public, but you can visit it on an exclusive private tour of the Vatican).

The modern staircase is in the shape of a double helix, like human DNA, and enables people to ascend and descend simultaneously without ever crossing paths. Its beautiful spiral shape and fabulous art-deco metalwork details makes it the last must-see highlight in the museums.