Vatican Museums

A crucial fifty-year period in Europe, between the Enlightenment, revolution, empire and restoration, also saw renewal and radical transformation in the papal Collections.

From the second half of the eighteenth century onward, discoveries from excavations in Rome and Lazio and acquisitions from collectors and antique dealers led to significant expansions in the collections. Soon, with the influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment, the "Museums of the Pope" were transformed into a museum in the modern sense, one whose purpose is to protect works of ancient art and to promote the study and knowledge of the artworks.

It was a period of great turmoil but one that also gave birth to the oldest and most fascinating part of the Vatican’s collections, the Pio Clementino Museum. The founding of the museum was the work of two popes who both hailed from Italy's Emilia-Romagna region: Clement XIV (Ganganelli) and Pius VI (Braschi). The creation of the Octagonal Court dates from the 1770s. The plan, devised by architect Michelangelo Simonetti, was a reworking of Julius II's Antiquarium of Statues. Here, Roman skies look down on unparalleled masterpieces of sculpture dating back to antiquity (the Laocoön, the Apollo Belvedere, the Venus felix and the Belvedere Hermes as well as Antonio Canova's Perseus Triumphant and the Pugilists). The Pio Clementino Museum’s other sections surround the court like the points on a compass rose: the Hall of Animals, the Hall of the Muses, the Round Hall, the Gallery of the Statues and the Hall of Busts, the Cabinet of Masks and the Gallery of the Candelabra.
It is noteworthy that the artworks in the Pio Clementino Museum are displayed within a perfectly fitting architectural and decorative setting; the harmony between artworks and surroundings is something to be admired in itself.

It was also Pius VI who, around 1790, created the Vatican Museums’ first collection of paintings, 118 priceless works. In 1797, however, following the Treaty of Tolentino signed with Napoleon, the Papal States were forced to surrender the Pio Clementino Museum's greatest masterpieces, including the most important works in the painting collection, to France.