Chiaramonti Museum

Connecting the Vatican Palaces to the small Palace of the Belvedere is the long loggia home to the Chiaramonti Museum. This museum honors pope Pius VII Chiaramonti, who governed from 1800 to 1823, and is a reminder of the drastic time in the Vatican Collections' history. Following the Treaty of Tolentino in 1797, Napoleon required the Papal States to surrender most of the masterpieces in the Pio Clementino Museum to France.

In 1806, a new museum was established through an extensive purchase campaign conducted by Roman antiquaries and those involved in excavating sites in the Papal States. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the tireless efforts of Antonio Canova, a sculptor, were instrumental in recovering almost all the sculptures that were previously taken away. Canova himself oversaw the arrangement of the museum to showcase the "three sister arts" together – displaying antique sculptures, ancient architectural corbels, and frescoes. Painted by young artists of the time and funded directly by Canova, the last of these works commemorate the superior attentiveness of the Pontiffs toward Rome's artistic and cultural heritage. Panel XXI even features a depiction of the Vatican's recovered works from France.

The Chiaramonti Museum boasts an impressive collection of over a thousand ancient sculptures, particularly famous for its Roman portrait busts, as well as idealistic and funerary works. The display method follows Quatremère de Quincy's philosophy, which emphasizes the importance of comparing masterpieces to lesser-known pieces arranged around them. De Quincy had argued against the French sequestrations, stating that art should be displayed in its original context alongside other artworks of varying quality for optimal understanding.