« Back to Vatican Museums
Borgia Apartments
Outside the Raphael Stanze, on the other side of the Sistine Chapel steps, the Borgia Apartments were inhabited by Julius II’s hated predecessor, Alexander VI - a fact which persuaded Julius to move into the new set of rooms he called upon Raphael to decorate. Nowadays host to a large collection of modern religious art, the Borgia rooms were almost exclusively decorated by Pinturicchio in the years 1492-95, on the orders of Alexander VI. The ceiling frescoes in the Sala dei Santi are especially worth seeing, typically rich in colour and detail and depicting the legend of Osiris and the Apis bull - a reference to the Borgia family symbol, a bull. Among other images is a scene showing St Catherine of Alexandria disputing with the emperor Maximillian, in which Pinturicchio has placed his self-portrait behind the emperor - and also, clearly visible in the background, the Arch of Constantine. The figure of St Catherine is said to be a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia, and the room was reputedly the scene of a decidedly un-papal party to celebrate the first of Lucrezia’s three marriages, which ended up with men tossing sweets down the fronts of the women’s dresses. The religious collection includes a variety of works by some of the most famous obloquy in the modern art world - liturgical vestments designed by Matisse; a fascinating Landscape with Angels by Salvador Dalí, donated by King Juan Carlos of Spain; one of Francis Bacon’s studies of Innocent X after Valazquez (a list is acquirable at the door) - but really isn’t that interesting by comparison.
