VATICAN MUSEUMS, Art Gallery - Raphael And Caravaggio

The central hall of the Art Gallery is entirely dedicated to Raphael. Here you'll see the tapestries that were woven in Brussels based on his drawings, with his Acts of the Apostles which were originally meant to cover the lower part of the Sistine Chapel.

Among the many paintings by Raphael in this room, I suggest starting with his last work, the Transfiguration. This great altarpiece actually depicts two different episodes: below you can see the Apostles trying in vain to heal a possessed boy; above, on the summit of Mount Tabor, you can see Christ rising up into the air wrapped in white robes between the prophets Moses and Elijah. Despite the difficulty of connecting the two different situations, the painting is fluid and homogeneous, and loaded with emotions and reciprocal references. Only a few brush strokes were missing from the painting when Raphael died early at the young age of 37, leaving an immense void in Renaissance art.

When you pass through the section of 17th and 18th-century painting, along with masterpieces by Poussin, Guido Reni, Guercino, and other Italian and foreign painters, I'd especially like to point out The Entombment of Christ by Caravaggio, painted around 1604....