Room of Heliodorus

The stories in this room share a concern with danger and protection. The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple concerns sacred property. The Liberation of St Peter concerns a threatened religious leader. Other walls show the Mass of Bolsena and the encounter of Pope Leo the Great with Attila. Raphael decorated this room after the Room of the Segnatura. Pope Julius II used it for private audiences. The painted episodes present the Church as receiving divine protection across biblical and later history. That message also belonged to Julius’s own political circumstances, as he sought to restore papal territorial power in an Italy contested by other states. You can read each scene on its own, then compare what is being protected in it. The programme moves between faith, a leader, a place and possessions. Those subjects made the room’s religious stories relevant to the people received here. The adjoining Segnatura approaches the pope’s learning and authority through another group of subjects, including philosophy and theology.