Pinacoteca Room IV

Platina kneels before Pope Sixtus IV and points toward an inscription. The picture shows his appointment as head of the Vatican Library, surrounded by members of the pope’s family. Melozzo da Forlì painted the fresco around 1477 for a room of the old Library. Its grand painted architecture frames a scene of papal patronage and learning. The angel musicians came from a different setting. Around 1480, Melozzo painted an Ascension for the apse of the church of the Holy Apostles in Rome. When that decoration was destroyed in 1711, fragments survived. The angel playing a lute belongs to that group. Notice how the angel’s body is seen from below. Melozzo made these figures for a high architectural setting, so their forms had to make sense to people looking upward. In the gallery, a fragment that can be studied closely still carries the viewpoint of the church for which it was painted.