VATICAN
281
VATICAN
Tiily. Here the secretary of state receives twice
•ekiy the diplomats accredited to the Holy See and
merous other visitors. Along the Scala Pia, built
d covered by Pius IX, which leads from the Portone
Bronzo to the Court of St. Damasus, he the exten-
'e apartments of the maestro di camera and the
ijordomo. The other residents of the palace are
3 four spu'itual chamberlains in immediate attend-
ee, the monsignor sagri.sta, the maestro del sacro
lazzo (a Dominican, theological adviser of the
pe and censor of the books printed in Rome),
der-secretary of state, prefect of the Vatican Li-
iry, household administrator of the ApostoUc
lace, other court and administrative officials, and
Few servants.
VII. The P.\l.\ce as a Treasury of Art. — The itican contains an .ibund;inr'f' ^f '••orV= of art, which
ftcoPHAGUs OF St. Constantia, Daughter of Constaxtine
THE Great
Preser\'ed in the Vatican Museum
3 now catalogued in every tourist's guide-book. 1 the one hand are museums and collections and the other the interior decoration of the palace, le Vatican treasures of art also include much of entific importance, which will be treated in the lowing section. Here belong especially the rich ■asures exhibited in the librarj' and various other jects. The Vatican works of art represent in their tirety an irreplaceable trea.sure, which is not lively at the disposal of the Curia, but passively in eir pos.session, since the repair and maintenance of pse objects make great claims on the resources of e Holy See. Those who proclaim the riches of the iria should know that, though the works of art are )rth many hundred millions, they have no market lue. The Holy See, notwithstanding its difficult ancial position, values too highly its civilizing ission to divest itself of these treasures, which are ing constantly increa.«ed.
A. The Vnlican Musrums. — Co.simo Stornaiolo says one pa.ssage: "The attitude of the Church towarJis e statues of the false gods and similar works of art IS proclaimed by the Christian poet Prudent ius in e fourth century as follows (Contra SjTnmachum,
I, 502): 'Let the statues be retained merely as the
works of great masters; as such they may constitute
the greatest ornament of our native town [Rome] with-
out the misuse of an art which serves the wicked con-
taminating these memorials.' In accordance with
this spirit of the Church, the early Christian emperors
issued repeatedly laws against the destroyers of
ancient works of art, and medieval Rome saw on aU
sides — in its pubhc squares, in the ruins of the ancient
palaces, and in the villas of the neighbourhood —
numberless statues of gods, emperors, and renowned
men. It is true that, during a period of unrestrained
barbarism when the popes transferred their residence
from Rome to Avignon, works in marble found their
way to the lime-kilns; but scarcely were these times
past, during which Petrarch declares the Romans had
degenerated to a nation of cowherds, than the popes,
in accordance with their full conviction that the
Church was the fu'St-called protectress and patroness
of art, devoted their attention to the preservation of
the ancient objects of art. The papal palaces thus
possess so great an abundance of masterpieces of all
ages for the instruction and enjoyment of both the
friends and the enemies of the papacy that, were
all the other collections of the world destroyed by
some catastrophe, the Vatican collection would suffice
for the perpetuation of all aesthetic culture, both pagan
and Christian. The popes were not alone the first to
cstabhsh museums, but they have also by their exam-
ple spurred all other governments of Europe to imita-
tion, and thereby performed a great service in the
refining of artistic taste among all modern nations.
For the Vatican museums, in contrast to so many
others, were instituted purely from a-sthetic, and not
from historical considerations." These important
i(>niarks apply not alone to the museums, but likewise
to all the Vatican collections and scientific institutions,
riie Vatican museums are: (1) The Museo Pio-
("lementino; (2) the Galleria Chiaramonti; (3) the
I'.iaccio Nuovo; (4) the Egyptian Museum; (5) the
l^truscan Museum.
(1) The Museo Pio-Clementino. — The first col- lection of antiquities in the world was made by Popes lulius II, Leo X, Clement VII, and Paul III in the Belvedere. Of the treasures there collected, most of w liich were a few decades later (especially by Pius V) given away or removed, ordy a few of the prominent olijects maintain their place in the Vatican to-day. To tlipse belong, for exam])le, the Torso of Heracles, the Belvedere Apollo, and the Laocoon. Clement XIV's activity in collecting antiquities was continued by Pius VI with such great success that their combined collections, arranged by Ennio Quirino Visconti, were united in one large museum, named for these popes, the Museo Pio-Clementino. It contains eleven separate rooms, filled with celebrated antiqui- ties, (a) Sala a croce greca. — At the expense of half a milhon lire (SIOO.OOO) Pius VI had the two gigantic porphyry sarcophagi of Sts. Helena and Constantia, the mother and daughter of Constantine the Great, repaired and transferred to this museum, built by Simonetti. Conspicuous among the statues is that of the youthful Octavian, one of the very few ancient statues of which the head was never separated from the trunk. Among the few mosaics is the Cnidian Venus, which is esteemed the most perfect copy of the masterpiece of Praxiteles, (b) Sala della Biga. — • The masterly restoration of an ancient two-wheeled racing chariot, drawn by two horses, by the sculptor Franzoni hjis given its name to the beautiful circular room erected by (!!amporesi. The wheels and one of the horses are new, a fact which only the ex])ert can discern. In this room are also a bearded Bacchus, two discus-throwers, a bearded athlete, sarcophagi, and other works of art.
(c) Galleria dci Candelabri. — Under Pius VI the very long Hall of Bramante was closed on this side,
