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Vatican Picture Gallery
Raphael's Circumcision - Vatican's Pinacoteca, Vatican Museums, Vatican City - Rome
Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel
Viale Vaticano - 00165
00120 Città del Vaticano - Roma (Italy)
Tel. +39 06.69884947 - Fax +39 06.69885061
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Opening time:
From April 1 to October 31: 8.45-16.45
From November 1 to March 31: 8.45-13.45
Closed all Sundays and holidays,
except for the last Sunday of the month
when the Musei are open with free admission.
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Pinacoteca Vaticana
The origins of the Vatican’s Pinacoteca can be traced to the picture gallery which Pius VI had opened in 1790 in what is now the Gallery of Tapestries. Nevertheless, the institution of the Pinacoteca dates to the agreements reached at the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, when the Holy See promised to put on display in a single place all the paintings that would be returned by the French (1815-16); these works of art had been taken away to France as a result of the Tolentino Peace Treaty (1797) which the pope had been obliged to sign. Of the 506 paintings that the occupying forces took away, only 249 were returned.
Inaugurated in 1932
The final display of the paintings, arranged according to chronological and historical principles in the building designed specifically for this purpose by Luca Beltrami (begun in 1929), was inaugurated by Pius Xl Ratti on October 27, 1932.
A suitable place for preservation
The new Vatican Pinacoteca was built in the nineteenth century Square Garden, isolated and completely surrounded by avenues, in a place considered suitable for assuring the best lighting conditions for both the correct preservation of the works and their optimum aesthetic enhancement. Thus the age-old question of the exhibition of the paintings, which were constantly moved around the Apostolic Palaces due to the lack of a setting that matched their importance, was solved.
Transferred to Paris
A first collection of only 118 precious paintings was created by Pope Pius VI around 1790. It was of short duration due to the fact that, following the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) some of the greatest masterpieces were transferred to Paris.
460 paintings
The idea of an art gallery, understood in the modern sense as an exhibition open to the public, was only born in 1817 after the fall of Napoleon and the consequent return to the Church State of a large part of the works belonging to it, according to the directions of the Congress of Vienna. The collection continued to grow over the years through donations and purchases until it reached the current nucleus of 460 paintings, distributed among the eighteen rooms on the basis of chronology and school, from the so-called Primitives (12th-13th century) to the 19th century.
The greatest italian painters
The collection contains some masterpieces of the greatest artists of the history of Italian painting, from Giotto to Beato Angelico, from Melozzo da Forlì to Perugino and to Raphael, from Leonardo to Tiziano, to Veronese, to Caravaggio and to Crespi.
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