Gallery of the Tapestries

Look at a figure’s clothing and the shape of the landscape around it. In a tapestry, coloured threads build the image. The drawing had to become a design that a workshop could weave, and the finished work could travel to another setting. The Life of Christ series was woven in Brussels in the workshop of Pieter van Aelst between 1524 and 1531, from designs by Raphael’s pupils. Another series celebrates the life of Pope Urban VIII. His nephew, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, commissioned it from the Barberini manufactory in Rome later in the seventeenth century. The two groups had different patrons and purposes. The room has changed too. Part of this space housed an early Vatican painting gallery under Pius VI. His successor, Pius VII, arranged it as one long gallery. The ceiling decoration survives from the earlier period. Its Roman emperors and allegorical figures celebrate the virtues and actions of Pius VI, adding a painted papal story above the woven ones.