Vatican Museum Part (1):
GALLERY OF THE MAPS
The Gallery is named after the maps painted on the walls in 40 different panels, each devoted


to a region, island or particular territory of Italy.

APARTMENT OF ST.PIUS V
Gallery of St. Pius V: tapestries produced in Tournai in the middle of the sixteenth century

and by Pieter van Aelst.
Chapel decorated with frescoes by Giorgio Vasari and Jacopo Zucchi.

SOBIESKI ROOM
Named for the painting which takes up the entire north wall with its depiction of the victory


of John III Sobieski, King of Poland, over the Turks outside the walls of Vienna in 1683. The

work was painted by Jan Matejko (1883).

RAPHAEL'S ROOMS AND LOGGIAS
The four rooms commonly known as the "Rooms of Raphael" were part of - togheter with the

"Chiaroscuri" room, the Old Room of the Swiss, the cubicle with its adjoining heater, the

Nicholine Chapel and the Loggia - the new residence chosen by Julius II on the third floor of

the building.
The series of four communicating rooms was a reconstruction carried out by Nicholas V

(1447-55) of the thirteenth century palace of Nicholas III (1277-80). Towards the end of the

first decade of the sixteenth century Perugino, Sodoma, Baldassarre Peruzzi and Bramantino

were all at work decorating them, but in 1509 Julius II dismissed them and commissioned

Raphael to decorate the whole of this part of the Vatican. He worked there for about ten

years, but only three of the rooms were completed before his death in 1520, and the direct

intervention of the master is certain in only two of them.


Deservedly one of the most famous places in the world, the Sistine Chapel is the site where

the conclave for the election of the popes and other solemn pontifical ceremonies are held.

Built to the design of Baccio Pontelli by Giovannino de Dolci between 1475 and 1481, the

chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who commissioned it. It is a large rectangle with a

barrel-vaulted ceiling and it is divided into two unequal parts by a marble screen. The screen

and the transenna were built by Mino da Fiesole and other artists.
The frescoes on the long walls illustrate parallel events in the Lives of Moses and Christ and

constitute a complex of extraordinary interest executed between 1481 and 1483 by Perugino,

Botticelli, Cosimo Rosselli and Domenico Ghirlandaio, with their respective groups of

assistants, who included Pinturicchio, Piero di Cosimo and others; later Luca Signorelli also

joined the group.
The barrel-vaulted ceiling is entirely covered by the famous frescoes which Michelangelo

painted between 1508 and 1512 for Julius II. The original design was only to have represented

the Apostles, but was modified at the artist's insistence to encompass an enormously complex

iconographic theme which may be synthesized as the representation of mankind waiting for the

coming of the Messiah. More than twenty years later, Michelangelo was summoned back by Paul

III (1534-49) to paint the Last Judgement on the wall behind the altar. He worked on it from.