Guided tours were not available today, but a ticket for the Vatican Museum at a convenient time was available on-line. We arrived early to mail some postcards with Vatican city stamps; no joy there, the post office was on the other side of a barricade (1). We lingered in the square in the warm sunshine until our museum entry time.
The museum entry is through the thick walls on the north side of the Vatican. The crowds are funneled through the museum generally in one direction. The museums are arranged in rough chronological order, beginning with the Vatican's Egyptian collection, although the Sistene chapel (1600s) comes after the modest 20th and 21th century items.
The Egyptian and Roman collections seem designed to highlight how the church has superceded these epochs, and perhaps drawn upon their legacy.
Sucessive popes have added to the collections, with some naming wings after themselves. There is a whole room devoted to the declaration of the Immaculate Conception as official Church Dogma in 1854 (2), with a fresco depicting Pope Pius IX proclaiming the doctrine.
A corridor has a series of well-preserved Flemish Tapestries from the 1500s depicting scenes from Jesus' life (3). I was eager to see the Hall of maps which came next; cartographic history fascinates me. I was disappointed to discover that the hall is just full of detailed maps of Italy, all painted on the walls in the 1600s (4).
The highlight of the Museums visit were the rooms containing frescoes (5) painted by Raphael in the high Renaissance. The most famous of these (a scene of which is depicted on the museum tickets), is the School of Athens, which places Greek philosophers and Chuch fathers together in conversation and debate. I tarried in this room for a while. On an adjacent wall, Raphael has depicted a bishop who was skeptical of trans-substantiation (6) being convinced when the eucharistic begins to bleed.
The Sistene Chapel is near the end of the tour (no pictures are allowed). Wooden benches are arrayed around the edges with cantered head rests to facilitate viewing of the famous ceiling paiпtings. Michelangelo's most famous painting is on the ceiling: God's finger reaching out to Adam's finger to give him life. Perhaps it was the noisy crowds or the ubiquity of the image, but it did not make that strong an impression on me.
After a late lunch, we headed to Fiumicino airport for our evening flight to Paris-Orly.
(1) A motorcade came through carrying someone important. The Italian police escorts veered off just outside Vatican City limits (a). The Swiss Guard (b) is the police authority at the Vatican.
(a) Vatican city being its own country (i), the Italian police lack jurisdiction within.
(i) The smallest in the world, with sovereign territory measured in acres, and the shortest state railway, with 980 feet of track.
(b) Generally from the Italian-speaking region of Ticino in Switzerland. Like the country itself, the Swiss guards were valued for their neutrality in the ever-changing series of alliances among the Italian city-states, principalities, and republics, including the Papal States (centered in Rome) over which the Popes exercised temporal power.
(2) The notion that Mary was conceived without original sin, thus having an appropriately pristine womb in which to carry Jesus. I was surprised that the doctrine (and the obligation to attend Mass on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8)) was so recent.
(3) For some reason, more tapestries present the massacre of the innocents than any orher event. According to Luke, King Herod (trying to prevent a rival claimant his throne) had all young boys in Judea killed. Having had advance notice from an angel, Jesus was safely hiding in Egypt at the time.
(4) To my surprise, the room was not climate controlled, with fresh air flowing through open windows. While pleasant on a mid 60s° F day, I'm not sure how the varying temperature and humidity might affect the painted maps.
(5) The audio guide explained that frescoes (unlike other murals) are painted on fresh stucco, so that the paint and stucco dry together, making a more stable bond. This is a lengthy process, with only small patches of stucco installed at a single time.
(6) The doctrine that the Eucharistic host and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus during consecration at a Mass, and are not merely symbolic.
St. Peter's Basilica
Statue of the Egyptian Goddess Sekhmet
Centaur mosaic
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