Vatican Launches First Major Raphael Loggia Restoration in 500 Years
A Renaissance ceiling once exposed to the weather is now at the center of an unusually ambitious conservation effort. The Vatican Museums and the World Monuments Fund have begun a five-year restoration of the Raphael Loggia in the Apostolic Palace, the first major intervention there in half a millennium.
The project is backed in part by a $14.5 million donation from Steven A. Schwarzman’s foundation, with $5.5 million earmarked for the restoration itself. The remaining funds will support documentation, digitization, and education through a training partnership between the Vatican Museums and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland.
The Raphael Loggia occupies the second story of the Apostolic Palace, within the papal apartments reserved for distinguished visitors and personnel. Donato Bramante oversaw its addition for Pope Julius III in 1512, and Raphael’s students completed the painted program for Pope Leo X in 1519, just a year before Raphael’s death. The decoration drew on the visual language of the recently uncovered Domus Aurea, where Raphael, Michelangelo, and their contemporaries studied the remains of Emperor Nero’s palace complex.
The loggia’s 13 bays are organized around biblical figures, with four related scenes in each bay. All but one bay is drawn from the Old Testament. The walls are populated by hybrid human, animal, and plant forms that helped shape the grotesque vocabulary later associated with Mannerism.
Preservation has long been complicated by the building’s own history. The 213-foot-long loggia was originally open to the air, then fitted with stained glass windows by Antonio Canova in 1813. That intervention, intended to protect the paintings, instead trapped heat and humidity and accelerated deterioration.
The current treatment plan was developed through trials on the sixth bay between 2019 and 2020, and again from 2023 to 2024. According to Paolo Violini, chief restorer at the Vatican Restoration Laboratory, surface examination showed the need for a dry cleaning method to protect the fragile original layers. More than 20 Vatican Museums professionals will use lasers in the cleaning process.
After the restoration, the Vatican Museums Patrons of the Arts will fund new UV-protective windows and a new lighting system. The project arrives as the Vatican continues to invest in the care of its most vulnerable masterpieces, including a recent restoration of Michelangelo’s nearby Last Supper in the Sistine Chapel.
