The restoration of the Hall of Constantine

On 26 June, the Vatican Museums is dedicating an important event in its Thursday Museum Programme to the completion of the long and complex restoration of the cycle of paintings in the Hall of Constantine, the largest of Raphael's Rooms.

The conservation work, which began in March 2015, initially focused on the east wall, where the magnificent scene of The Vision of the Cross is located, and was completed in December 2024 with the restoration of the large painted tapestry that dominates the entire decoration in the centre of the vault.

The entire project was coordinated by the Department of 15th and 16th Century Art and carried out by the Laboratory for the Restoration of Paintings and Wooden Materials in collaboration with the Department of Scientific Research, with the generous support of The Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums, New York Chapter.

The cleaning of the paintings, with the restoration of the formal and aesthetic values of the entire decoration of the walls and vault, has brought to light many topics for historical, critical and technical reflection on the methods of execution, complex and stimulating topics that represent a kind of turning point in the study of Raphael, his workshop and the great artistic projects of the 16th century.

The Hall of Constantine was referred to in documents as the Aula pontificum superior' to distinguish it from the Aula pontificum inferior' on the floor below, in the Borgia Apartment. Intended for official ceremonies such as consistories or solemn wedding banquets, it was named in honour of the Roman emperor who granted freedom of worship to Christians and was decorated in several phases: During the Medici pontificates of Leo X (1513-1521) and Clement VII (1523-1534), to whom we owe the oil paintings on the walls by Raphael depicting Comitas and Iustitia Iustitia, and the monumental frescoes on the walls painted by his workshop, The paintings, by Giulio Romano and Giovan Francesco Penni, depict the Visione della Croce (or Adlocutio), the Battle of Ponte Milvio, the Baptism of Constantine and the Donation of Rome; during the pontificate of Paul III Farnese (1534-1549), who was responsible for some of the work of Sebastiano del Piombo; and finally during the pontificates of Gregory XIII Boncompagni (1572-1585) and Sixtus V Peretti (1585-1590), when the vault was decorated by Tommaso Laureti, a pupil of Sebastiano del Piombo and author of the iconic Triumph of Christianity over Paganism. Today, the two extraordinary figures painted in oil by the Urbino artist, the monumentality of the wall scenes and the skilful visual deception created by Laureti with the paintings on the vault, of which the false tapestry in the centre is a supreme masterpiece of illusionist perspective, allow us to appreciate the unparalleled decorative and iconographic richness of the room, now that it has been fully restored.
At the end of the ten-year restoration of the cycle of paintings in the Hall of Constantine, it can be said without doubt that the paintings on the walls, the two figures in oil by Raphael and the four frescoes by Giulio Romano and his collaborators, together with the subsequent decoration of the vault by Laureti, with their different pictorial approaches, constitute a renewed and extraordinary testimony, a veritable palimpsest, of painting in Rome from the early to the late 16th century.

The conference will be opened by the Director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta, and will be attended by the Curator of the 15th and 16th century Art Department, Fabrizio Biferali, the Head of the Paintings and Woodwork Restoration Laboratory, Francesca Persegati, and the Head of the Scientific Research Department, Fabio Morresi. Francesca Persegati and the master restorer Fabio Piacentini, as well as the head of the scientific research department, Fabio Morresi.
At the end of the meeting there will be a visit to the Hall of Constantine, where the conservation work will be presented.

To her, it means a merge between traditionalism and innovation; an attempt at preservation without embalming. Hers is a response to that all-too-common reality wherein museums run the risk of turning into warehouses of the already seen: she conceptualizes the museum as a space that asks questions.

Restoration Hall of Constantine raised many such questions—perhaps some that could even prove disturbing: what does it mean to look at a work of art? How is power depicted? And what, after all, is history in art supposed to mean? She is supported by a great team: restoration of the paintings is under the control of Fabio Piacentini and Francesca Persegati, while Fabio Morresi with his diagnostics team scanned the room as if it were an archaeological site.

Among their tools are infrared reflectography, UV fluorescence, stratigraphic analysis, and 3D modeling - that was some surfacing painting methodical in its thoroughness, layer by layer with no shortcuts revealed at the end not just a facelift but rather a deep revelation. And there's more. What makes it even more fascinating is that the room stays real to its history. It isn't a hideout or simply a piece of the past put under glass; it acts like some sort of defense mechanism. , curator of 15th and 16th century art, puts this idea plain: The Hall of Constantine tells the tale of a whole hundred years — its popes, its crises, its political choices. From humanism in Leo X to Counter-Reformation in Sixtus V with the storm of the Council of Trent, this imagery is not 'beautiful'; it is necessary.

These images carry weighty messages, both for our own time and for those earlier watchers. Those who look at these works today are not only cardinals and ambassadors, but a very great miscellany of people comprising students, tourists, idle lookers-on, believers, and lovers of art. This difference changes the whole experience. The room gives, more than ever perhaps, an experience that speaks of beauty as of difficulty. To engage with it is to make one’s way through a web of meanings—meanings which explain that an image need not be immediately lucid, that a face may hide a doctrine, that in a brushstroke there can be an interpretation of power.

The Hall of Constantine is not anymore and maybe never really was just ‘the largest of Raphael’s rooms. It rather emerges as a work of art capable of embracing, the totality of the world. Now that it has been restored brought to light and questioned it is ready again for another story with all its different layers, its ghosts, and its contradictions. Maybe what we need right now is exactly a place that doesn’t want to simplify, but rather wants to complicate. An effort that does not offer comfort but asks for reflection. A mural which speaks about history reminds us that the present — like art itself — has many layers, meanings, and viewpoints.