vatican museums appartamento borgia

The Borgia apartment is on the first floor of the Pontifical Palace and today is part of the complex of the Vatican Museums system in some of its rooms is in fact hosted a part of modern religious art. It was Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, to request accommodation in six rooms of the building as a private residence for himself and his family. The apartment is also known as the "secret rooms" because the death of the pontiff were abandoned and not used until the nineteenth century. The interior decoration works were entrusted to Pinturicchio. The artist was faced with a real challenge because he had never had to work for such a large project, however, with a large group of aides, he was able to paint the rooms in just two years (1492-1494). Each room has been decorated individually, but all have the same common thread. The first room is dedicated to the Sibyl of the ancient world, in the twelve lunettes decorating the ceiling you see them represented inseme the Christian prophets. In the next room you can admire instead pairs of apostles and prophets too, as in the previous one, painted on a blue background. The third, the Hall of Liberal Arts, was the personal library of the Pope and takes the name from the allegories of liberal arts depicted on the ceiling of the times: astronomy, grammar, dialectic, geometry, music. The hand of Pinturicchio is particularly reflected in the Hall of the Saints, the most famous of the apartment room. The artist took charge personally of the frescoes on the walls and vaulted ceiling based on the theme of divine justice and depicting even the Pope himself among the pagan gods. The work of the master is also noticeable in the next room, the Hall of Mysteries, so named because it is decorated with images of the mysteries of faith. The last room is also the largest, was used for banquets and ceremonies. Because of a slump, had all'incuria of these rooms, was repainted in 1500 during the pontificate of Leo X.

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