Page 429 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Italy

ROME : THE V A TIC AN AND TR ASTE VERE  427

Early Christian and
Medieval Art
The main collection of early
Christian antiquities is in the
Pio-Christian Museum, which
contains inscriptions and
sculpture from catacombs
and early Christian basilicas.
The sculpture consists chiefly
of reliefs from sarcophagi,
though the most striking work
is a free-standing 4th-century
statue of the Good Shepherd.
The sculpture’s chief interest
lies in the way it blends
biblical episodes with pagan
mythology. The idealized
pastoral figure of the shepherd
became Christ himself, while
bearded philosophers turned
into the Apostles.
The first two rooms of the
Pinacoteca are dedicated to late
medieval art, mostly wooden
altarpieces painted in tempera.
The outstanding work is Giotto’s
Stefaneschi Triptych of about
1300, which decorated the main
altar of the old St Peter’s. Pietà (c.1471–4) by the Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini in the Pinacoteca
The Vatican Library has a
number of medieval treasures, age. The galleries around the fascinating frescoes can be
including reliquaries, textiles, Cortile del Belvedere were found in the Loggia of
enamels and icons. decorated by great artists Raphael, but a visit here
between the 16th and the requires special permission.
19th centuries. The Pinacoteca has many
The Gallery of Tapestries is important Renaissance works.
hung with tapestries woven in Highlights from the 15th century
Brussels to designs by students are a fine Pietà by Giovanni
of Raphael. The Apartment of Bellini, part of his Coronation of
Pope Pius V has beautiful the Virgin altarpiece in Pèsaro
15th-century Flemish tapestries, (see p372); and Leonardo da
and the Gallery of Maps is Vinci’s unfinished St Jerome,
frescoed with 16th-century discovered, after being long lost,
maps of ancient and in two halves. One was being
contemporary Italy. used as a coffer lid in an antique
Alongside the Raphael Rooms shop, the other as the seat of a
(see p431) are the Room of the stool in a shoemaker’s.
Chiaroscuri and Pope Exceptional pieces from the
Nicholas V’s private 16th century include eight
chapel. This was tapestry cartoons, the
frescoed be tween Transfiguration and
1447 and 1451 Madonna of Foligno
Detail of Giotto’s Stefaneschi Triptych by Fra Angelico. by Raphael, in
(1330) in the Pinacoteca Also worth a room devoted
seeing is to the artist;
the Borgia a Deposition
15th- to 19th- Apartment, by Caravaggio;
century Art decorated in an altarpiece
Many Renaissance popes were the 1490s by Pinturicchio’s Adoration of the Magi by Titian;
connoisseurs of the arts who Pinturicchio (1490s), Borgia Apartment and St Helen by
considered it their duty to and his pupils Veronese, which
sponsor the leading painters, for the Borgia pope, shows the saint as a gorgeously
sculptors and goldsmiths of the Alexander VI. Another set of dressed aristocrat.

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