The Gallery of Tapestries, two series woven for the popes

The Gallery of Tapestries has a reputation problem. Plenty of visitors arrive looking for Raphael’s Sistine Chapel set, walk down this second-floor corridor convinced they’ve found it, and leave without realising it hangs in another room. The pieces here are different ones, and I find them just as rewarding, because they tell two very different stories. One is Flemish and devotional; the other is Roman and has a strong whiff of family PR. Here’s what’s on the walls, how to look at it and where it sits on the essential Vatican Museums route.

A corridor that used to be a picture gallery

This wasn’t always one gallery. In 1788 and 1789, under Pius VI, the stretch next to the Gallery of Maps was partitioned into three rooms to house the very first Vatican Pinacoteca. It was Pius VII, in the early 19th century, who opened it back up into a single space. I like knowing that, because it explains why the ceiling feels a world away from the walls. The painter was Bernardino Nocchi from Lucca, helped by Domenico Del Frate, with ornament by Antonio Marini, and Pius VI commissioned it to celebrate himself through Roman emperors.

The hangings themselves come from the old papal collections, which began commissioning whole series in the 15th century. Wear and Napoleonic looting took their toll, yet it still counts as one of the oldest collections of its kind anywhere.

So where are Raphael’s tapestries?

It’s the question everyone asks, and the answer is simple. The Acts of the Apostles, commissioned by Leo X for the Sistine and woven in Brussels by Pieter van Aelst’s workshop from designs by Raphael and his pupils, hang in the great Raphael hall of the Vatican Pinacoteca. The same room has a Last Supper based on Leonardo’s, a gift from Francis I of France to Clement VII in 1533.

If you want to see them, go early, because the Pinacoteca is in another wing and the one-way route doesn’t encourage doubling back. What you get in this gallery is the next generation from the very same workshop.

Eight scenes from the Life of Christ

The series is known as the Life of Christ or the Scuola Nuova. There were twelve pieces and eight are on show, woven in Brussels between 1524 and 1531 by Van Aelst, who by then was the pope’s official weaver thanks to the Sistine commission. The designs came from Raphael’s pupils.

It reads best as two groups. One covers Christ’s childhood, with the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple and the Massacre of the Innocents spread over three pieces. The other picks up after the Crucifixion, with the Resurrection, Noli me tangere, the Supper at Emmaus, the Ascension and Pentecost. The Descent into Limbo is lost. The childhood scenes were hung for Christmas consistories and the others at Easter, so the corridor brings two liturgical calendars together.

My pick is the Resurrection. The weft mixes wool, silk and gilded silver, and in the raking light of the corridor you can still see where the metal glints.

A pope woven by two women

The second series is Roman and far more worldly. Cardinal Francesco Barberini commissioned it to celebrate his uncle Maffeo, pope as Urban VIII from 1623, and it was woven between 1663 and 1679 in the workshop Francesco himself had founded in Rome in 1627. The cartoons came from painters in Pietro da Cortona’s circle, working from his drawings and those of his pupil Ciro Ferri.

The scenes run from his doctorate in Pisa and the draining of Lake Trasimeno to his creation as cardinal, his election, the consecration of St Peter’s and the walls of Rome. The detail I’d single out is another one. According to the official page the weaving was done by two women master weavers, Maria della Riviera and Anna Zampieri, and the election scene is signed by Maria della Riviera.

A ceiling pretending to be sculpture

Almost everyone walks under it without looking, because the Gallery of Maps is already in view. The vault has three parts. At the end next to the Gallery of the Candelabra, Nerva, Trajan and Alexander Severus issue edicts that echo Pius VI’s own policies, framed by painted fake reliefs. In the middle, Architecture holds up the pope’s coat of arms and hands it to Painting and Sculpture. In the final stretch before the Maps, the Clemency of Titus takes centre stage.

How long to spend, and when to pass through

I’d give it ten minutes. It’s a corridor on the way to somewhere, and the flow pushes you towards Raphael and the Sistine Chapel, so whatever you skip here you won’t get back. On the first morning slot you’ll arrive before people stand three deep in front of the walls. It’s covered by the standard ticket and flash-free photos are fine. To see where it sits among the other numbers, have a look at the Vatican Museums map explained.