THE PAOLINE AND LEONINE CHAPELS

The ordinary entrance to the Vatican is that known as the Bronze Doors at the end of the right-hand colonnade round the Piazza of St. Peter’s. This colonnade was the masterpiece of Bernini, one of the few classical works of the baroque period which really achieved their purpose of rivalling the glories of ancient Rome. The megalomania from which Bernini and his master suffered could not ruin this as it ruined most of his other works, for immensity is the chief element in its majestic beauty.

Worthy of proceeding from such a temple of the gods is the hill of stone called the Scala Regia--the Royal Staircase, which leads from the entrance to the Sala Regia, the Royal Hall. The staircase, too (one of the finest in the world), is Bernini’s work, and when carpeted and hung with crimson and lit with the huge gilt wall-piece _candelabri_, which can still be seen as you go to the Leonine Chapel, it formed a most appropriate setting to the brilliant pageants which used to pass up it when the Pope was holding high court.

The Sala Regia, from which you enter the Sistine Chapel, the Sala Ducale, the Paoline Chapel, and the Leonine Chapel, is a fine, well-proportioned, brilliantly coloured chamber built by Antonio da Sangallo, one of the architects of St. Peter’s. But its gigantic pictures do not rise above the level of good wall-paper. They represent various triumphs of the Catholic Faith, such as the Battle of Lepanto, by Vasari; the Absolution of the Emperor Henry IV., by Gregory VII., after his submission at Canossa, the work of the Zuccheri; the Triumph of the Church in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, by Vasari; the Benediction of Frederick Barbarossa, by Alexander III. at Venice, painted by Giuseppe della Porta; and the removal of the Papacy from Avignon under Gregory XI. The ceiling was painted by Pierino del Vaga.

The Sala Regia derives its name from being used by the Pope to receive the ambassadors of foreign Kings.

in Conclave.]

At one end of the Sala Regia is the Cappella Paolina, built in 1540, also by Antonio da Sangallo; it, too, contains frescoes by Federigo Zucchero--good examples of that master. It is used for great ceremonies like those of Holy Week. It is very difficult for the tourist to get admission to this chapel; it can only be done through one of the priests attached to it, or by attending one of the lectures which are occasionally allowed by the Vatican authorities to be given on this group of chapels. And the Paoline Chapel is well worth visiting, because it contains two undoubted frescoes by Michel Angelo, of which Kugler, quoted by Hare, says: “Two excellent frescoes, executed by Michel Angelo on the side wall of the Paoline Chapel, are little cared for, and are so much blackened by the smoke of lamps that they are seldom mentioned. The Crucifixion of St. Peter, under the large window, is in a most unfavourable light, but is distinguished for its grand, severe composition. That on the opposite wall--the Conversion of St. Paul--is still tolerably distinct. The long train of his soldiers is seen ascending in the background. Christ, surrounded by a host of angels, bursts upon his sight from the storm-flash. Paul lies stretched on the ground, a noble and finely developed form. His followers fly on all sides or are struck motionless by the thunder. The arrangement of the groups is excellent, and some of the single figures are very dignified; the composition has, moreover, a principle of order and repose, which, in comparison with the Last Judgment, places the picture in a very favourable light. If there are any traces of old age to be found in these works, they are at most discoverable in the execution of details.” And Sir A. H. Layard, in the revised edition of Kugler, says: “In 1549-50, when seventy-five years old, Michael Angelo executed two frescoes in the Paoline Chapel in the Vatican. They have been utterly neglected, and so much effaced by the smoke of candles as to be almost forgotten. The Crucifixion of St. Peter under the window, though seen with difficulty, is a grand and stern composition. The Conversion of St. Paul on the opposite wall is better seen.” The ordinary visitor is not inspired with the same enthusiasm about these frescoes. Daniele di Volterra, the pupil of Michel Angelo who finished them, in touching up St. Paul’s face forgot that he must have been a young man at his conversion, and gave him the grey beard and narrow forehead of Michel Angelo’s Moses--a too sincere form of flattery. But the upper part of the Conversion of St. Paul is magnificent. The long narrow chapel is gracefully proportioned, and the plaster reliefs are unusually elegant for Rome, though not at all equal to the exquisite reliefs of the Sicilian Serpotta, the prince of workers in plaster. There is a pathetic little passage about these frescoes in Duppa’s _Life of Michael Angelo_:

“Near to the Chapel of Sixtus, in the Vatican, Antonio da San Gallo built another, by the order of Paul III., which in like manner is called after its founder, the Chapel Paolina; and the Pope, being solicitous to render it more honourable to his name, commissioned Michel Angelo to paint the walls in fresco. Although he now began to feel he was an old man, he undertook the commission, and on the sides opposite to each other painted two large pictures, representing the Conversion of St. Paul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter. These pictures, he said, cost him great fatigue, and in their process declared himself sorry to find that fresco-painting was not an employment for his years; he therefore petitioned His Holiness that Perino del Vaga might finish the ceiling from his designs, which was to be decorated with painting and stucco ornaments; but this part of the work was not afterwards carried into execution.”

On the way up to the Leonine Chapel one passes through various lumber-rooms, in which are kept the sumptuous gold candle-brackets designed by Bernini for the Scala Regia, and various tabernacles and so on, for use in processions, designed by him, all rather florid and baroque, but good for large effects. The Leonine Chapel, called also the Cappella della Beatificazione, and the Aula Dei, was converted into a chapel by Leo XIII.; it adjoins the Gallery of St. Peter’s, into which it opens on the right-hand side, while the windows on the left-hand side look out on to the Piazza. It was the custom of the Popes, until they lost their temporal sovereignty and ceased to appear outside the Vatican, to bless the people from one of the windows of this chapel on their election. The blessing is now delivered from the gallery to the people assembled in St. Peter’s. This Chapel of the Beatification has for its special functions the canonizations and beatifications of Saints. The decorations of the chapel are commonplace and not very high art. Most of the room is white, but the pilasters and ceiling are picked out richly with gilt. The whole effect is more that of a hall in a nobleman’s palace than of a chapel. Do not look at the gilt and white cornice and gilt and white ceiling of St. Peter’s from the gallery, although they are said to have been designed by Raffaelle. The cherubs, especially, need to be seen from the floor of the basilica, where distance gives them the requisite enchantment.

V., and Sala della Beatificazione, from which the Pope goes into the Gallery of St. Peter’s to bless the people after his election; used also for Canonizations.]

One does not regret the shortcomings of this chapel, which is the interior of the gallery over the portico of St. Peter’s, and hides all the beauty of the dome when you are in the Piazza (an architectural excrescence, erected by Maderna for Paul V., that should never have been permitted), because it will save an artistic Pope, who has the courage of his convictions, any qualms about taking it down and allowing the glorious dome to be properly seen.

The Sistine Chapel, which leads off from the Sala Regia, need not be described here: it is one of the first places visited by everyone who goes to Rome.

Opposite to the entrance of the Sistine Chapel is the entrance to the Sala Ducale--a low narrow corridor through which the Pope is carried in his Sedia Gestatoria for the great ceremonies in the Sistine Chapel, and formerly used for audiences to foreign princes. Once when I was passing through it there were Papal Guards being drilled in it. Its decorations are among the worst in the Vatican. Its ceiling is divided half-way up the room by an arch, designed by Bernini out of the bodies of two overgrown cherubs, and plaster curtains; and just under the ceiling the walls are decorated with a series of frescoes by a Fleming, called Paul Brill or Bril, who flourished in the last part of the sixteenth and the first part of the seventeenth century.

In the Sala Ducale we get a couple of familiar glimpses of the great Montaigne. In the _Journal of his Travels_, translated by Mr. W. G. Waters for Mr. John Murray, we read: “Thence he went down to the Vatican to inspect the statues set in the niches of the Belvedere, and the fine gallery, now almost completed, which the Pope is adorning with paintings of all parts of Italy. He lost his purse and all therein, and deemed this must have happened while he was giving alms--as he did twice or thrice; the weather was very rainy and unpleasant, and, instead of returning his purse to his pocket, he must have thrust it into the slashings of his hose. At this time he diverted himself entirely in studying Rome. He had at first engaged a Frenchman as guide, but this fellow took himself off in some ridiculous humour, whereupon M. de Montaigne prided himself on mastering by his own efforts the art of a guide. In the evening he would study certain books and maps, and next day repair to the spot and put in practice his apprenticeship, so that in a few days he could have shown his guide the way.”

It is to be noted that though the journal of Montaigne speaks of him in the third person, it was dictated by himself to his valet. Other parts of the journal are written in the first person.

Fontana.

_From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_]

At the end of the Sala Ducale you come to the Pope’s private tapestry rooms, which are back to back with the Borgia Apartments. There are two rooms, and the tapestries in the first are claimed by the Vatican authorities to be among the most valuable in the world. They fall into three lots. There are four large pieces with the arms of Paul III., the Farnese Pope (1534-1549), which have glorious colouring almost as rich as a picture of Ghirlandajo. Their subjects are “Esther and Ahasuerus”; “The Judgment of Solomon”; “The Story of Susannah”; and “Joseph and his Brethren.” Their titles are written under them. The richness of the tapestries is almost inconceivable.

On the window wall there are two tapestries not so good, one of them an Annunciation, which reminds you of a picture of Federigo Baroccio in the Vatican Gallery; the other is an Assumption.

On the wall to the right of the doorway where you go in is a tapestry which the _custode_ claims to be the finest in the world. But to me it did not seem so good as the large Farnese tapestries mentioned above; it is mounted on a frame, because the late Pope always had it placed over the altar while he was saying Mass. It is executed from a Crucifixion, rather in the manner of Perugino, but spoilt by a touch of modernity. However, one must not be too critical over a work of art which was the inspiration of so great a man as Leo XIII.

Over the doors hang other tapestries which, the _custode_ says, have been valued at over a million francs each--that is, £40,000. To me they did not appear so good as the tapestries of the same period which Mr. Joseph Whitaker, of Palermo, bought for less than a tenth of the price less than ten years ago. The _custode_ did not seem to understand much about the tapestries, and I think he was more influenced by pride in his charge than by knowledge of it.

A door at the end of the chamber admits you into a second chamber, of which the walls are covered with the tapestries of his betrothal and marriage, presented by Louis XIV. of France to the then Pope. Here dine the fourteen officers of the Swiss Guard, and here Cardinal Merry del Val, the Pope’s Secretary of State, gives his state dinners. All the dinners are given on that long green baize table with a red silk valence, which makes such an effective feature in the room’s scheme of colour. Privates and non-commissioned officers dine below in the Belvedere.

The marriage tapestry bears the inscription: “The ceremony of the marriage of Louis XIV., King of France and Navarre, with the Most Serene Infante, Marie Thérèse of Austria, eldest daughter of Philip IV. of Spain.” Louis and his wife are almost smothered in blue robes powdered with _fleur-de-lys_.

Smaller tapestries separate this and the betrothal tapestry from the great tapestry on the end wall, representing the Baptism of Our Lord by John the Baptist. It has a lovely high, rich colouring, though the drawing is rather banal. In this room the Pope vests himself when he is going to officiate in a ceremony, under the baldachin, with all the Cardinals round him. The room is really a sort of annexe of the Borgia Apartments.

The ceiling of 1576 has in its centre a picture of the Pentecost, by Domenichino. Over the door is the name of Urban VIII., the Barberini Pope, in whose time, I suppose, the apartment was decorated. The whole effect of both these rooms is very rich. The room opens out into the long, crimson-upholstered smoking-room of the Cardinals, which has lounges along its walls like a Tunisian guard-room. Zola says that the Louis Quatorze tapestries are from designs by Audran.

If you have one of the Vatican servants with you, ask him to take you out through the Loggia of Giovanni da Udine, instead of returning the same way. Udine, a fellow-worker with Raffaelle, lived 1487-1564, and he derived the inspiration for the decoration of the Loggia from the then newly discovered Baths of Titus, which were wonderfully fresh and bright when they were first exhumed.

They are chiefly arabesques of the style we call Pompeian; and constantly repeated in them you have the curious figure which occurs again and again in the glorious stuccoes of the tombs of the Valerii on the Latin Way--that of a woman riding a sea-serpent or dragon with a horse’s head.

The Loggia of Giovanni da Udine is below Raffaelle’s Loggie and brings you out into the Court of S. Damaso, almost opposite to the entrance of the Pope’s private apartments.