Pio Clementino Museum

Back in the day, the primary collection of classical sculpture belonging to Pope Julius II (1503-1513) was contained within the Cortile delle Statue, which we currently know today as the Octagonal Court. At a later point in time, specifically during the latter part of the 18th century, there was a significant increase in the size of the pontifical collections that took place.

This was due in part to all of the excavations that were going on in Rome and Lazio, as well as the contributions that were made by both collectors and antiquaries. The public creation of a museum dedicated to preserving ancient art and encouraging study can be attributed to the influence of Enlightenment ideals.

This institution, known as Pio Clementino, was named after two popes, Clement XIV Ganganelli and Pius VI Braschi, who were in charge of its establishment during their respective papacies in the late 18th century. To accommodate the museum's exhibits, a series of large exhibition halls were created by renovating and expanding upon existing rooms in and around the Innocent VIII Belvedere Palace. Under the directive of Alessandro Dori, Michelangelo Simonetti and Giuseppe Camporese, the architecture of the area took on a neo-classical form, complemented with the contributions of numerous painters and decorators. Here, antique works of sculpture are frequently restored to hide missing pieces, and ancient Roman relics have found a home.

Thanks to Antonio Canova's diplomacy, the majority of Papal States' Museum treasures were restored after Napoleon's victory and Treaty of Tolentino (1797) demanded they relinquish their crown jewels. The stolen masterpieces ended up in Paris until the fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna (1815).

The entrance to the Pope Clement Museum used to be through the square vestibule, and it is here because this was originally thought to be the entrance to the museum of Pope Clement XIV (1769-1774), as evidenced by the Latin inscription Museum Clementinum above this archway. Currently in the square vestibule is the massive sarcophagus of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus (he was consul in 290 BC), with several inscriptions found in the tombs of the great Roman family Scipiones on the Via Appia. The entrance to the round vestibule leads to the Cabinet of *Apoxyomenos*, so called because of the marble statue, which is a copy and not an original work by Lisippo. Inside the cabinet there are several inscriptions and a tuff portrait of a young man with a laurel crown called Ennio, which was also found in the tomb of Scipios.

Apoxyomenos

The word 'Apoxyomenos' comes from a Greek verb meaning to wash or clean. In ancient Greece, athletes used a method of removing the oils applied to their skin before a competition, using sand and a tool called a strigil. This particular athlete is shown wiping sand and oil from his outstretched right arm (the actual strigil was probably in his left hand). This statue, dating from around 50 A.D., is a marble copy of the bronze original by Lysippus, which the master sculptor created towards the end of his career, around 320 B.C. The swing of the arm has been extremely well captured by the Greek artist, whose pronounced forward movement creates space and gives depth to the image. The statue was found in 1849 during the demolition of an imperial building in Trastevere.

The Octagonal Court, formerly known as the Cortile delle Statue, housed the first group of classical antique statues in the papal collections. It was here that Pope Julius II della Rovere (1503-1513) placed a remarkable collection of ancient sculptures, with the idea of recreating in papal Rome the feeling of Rome at the time of the Caesars.

At the end of the 1700s, Popes Clement XIV and Pius VI began to transform this collection into a museum dedicated solely to this purpose, and this courtyard became the focal point of their new museum plan. Although many changes have been made over time, some sculptures such as Laocoön and Apollo Belvedere are still found exactly where they were placed at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Laocoön

Discovered on the Esquiline Hill in Rome in 1506, this group of statues was immediately identified as the Laocoön Statues. Pliny the Elder described them as the masterpiece of a Rhodesian sculptor. Legend has it that Laocoön, a priest of Apollo in Troy, warned his people during the Trojan War not to accept the wooden horse left by the Greeks at the city gates. Athena and Poseidon, friendly to the Greeks, then sent two giant sea serpents to entangle and devour Laocoön and his two sons. From the Roman perspective, the death of these innocents prompted Aeneas to heed Laocoön's warning and flee Troy. This ultimately led to the founding of Rome. Such an important sculpture naturally attracted the attention of Pope Julius II (reigned 1503-1513). He immediately bought the statue and placed it in the Cortile delle Statue, making it a central exhibit in his collection. The date of the statue remains controversial; it is generally believed to have been created between 40 and 30 BC.

In the two rooms that make up the Hall of Animals, created by Pope Pius VI (1775-1799), you can see ancient works of art, heavily restored and in some cases completely reworked, with the aim of creating a "stone zoo".

Many artists worked on the sculptures in this exhibition during the 1700s. Francesco Antonio Franzoni is probably the most prominent of these.

The works on display have been selected for their relationship with nature and hunting. In this room we see animals as key figures, both in their strange relationships with each other and with the heroes and gods of ancient times. Coloured marbles have been used to bring out the shades of the fur or feathers of many animals, or to give a work of art a particular colour effect.

This area, which now houses numerous masterpieces from the Pio Clementino Museum, was once part of the loggia of the palazzo of Innocent VIII Cybo (1484-1492) in Belvedere.

The walls were decorated with frescoes depicting landscapes and urban scenes, while in the lunettes there are still cupids painted by Pinturicchio and his assistants.

In 1771-1772, Clement XIV decided to incorporate fifteenth-century architecture into the museum he was building; the loggia was surrounded by walls with windows, and the Hall of Busts was created at the end of the gallery. Between 1776 and 1778, Pope Pius VI ordered the extension of the museum to the west and commissioned the painter Cristoforo Unterperger to decorate the vaulted ceiling of the new gallery.

Between 1771 and 1772, the architect Alessandro Dori adapted for museum use one of the rooms of the square tower of the palace of Innocent VIII (1484-1492). In 1780 the room was completely restructured by Michelangelo Simonetti; the stucco decorations and paintings are the work of Cristoforo Unterperger and Domenico De Angelis.

The room takes its name from the mosaics in the centre of the floor, which come from different parts of Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli. Among the sculptures on display, there are several female subjects: a reproduction of the famous group of the Three Graces; a statue of a nymph much admired by Goethe; and a series of statues of Aphrodite inspired by masterpieces of ancient Greek art.

Opened to the public in 1784, this room was designed to display a collection of sculptures discovered in the Villa of Cassius, near Tivoli. These works included numerous statues representing the Muses, an Apollo with a lyre, an Athena, herms and portraits of famous Greek personalities, all dating from the time of the Emperor Hadrian.
Significant alterations were made to the statues by 18th century restorers; some did not originally represent the Muses and were modified to achieve the complete set of nine personifications of the arts. The vaulted ceiling is decorated with frescoes by Tommaso Conca depicting Apollo and the Muses as sources of artistic inspiration. In the 1800s, the landscapes that once served as backgrounds for the various statues were painted over in Pompeian red.

Built in 1779 and opened in the same year, this large room has a hemispherical dome based on the vaulting of the Pantheon by Michelangelo Simonetti.

There are also niches on the walls to hold huge statues, alternating with half-columns supporting gigantic busts. The floor is made up of a wonderful collection of mosaics from the early third century A.D. found in Otricoli and Sacrofano, an invention of the eighteenth century. In the centre of the room is a huge red porphyry basin, 13 metres in diameter, which probably once adorned a large public area in Imperial Rome.

The hall was built during the pontificate of Pope Pius VI Braschi by the architect Michelangelo Simonetti and serves as the entrance to the Pio Clementino Museum.

The large entrance bears witness to this function with the Latin words Museum Pium inscribed above it, accompanied on either side by an Egyptian-style column statue (telamones) in pink granite dating from the first half of the 1st century A.D. In the centre of the floor is a mosaic bust of Athena. In addition to the Verospi Augustus, a portrait statue of Augustus in a heroic pose, most likely posthumous, and the statue of Gaius Caesar (Augustus' nephew), the hall contains two monumental porphyry sarcophagi.

This room was built by the architect Giuseppe Camporese at the same time as the Atrium of the Four Gates, located on the floor below.

Work began in 1786 and was completed in 1795 with the laying of the floor, which features parts of the coat of arms of Pope Pius VI Braschi, such as stars and the Boreal wind blowing on lilies. Statues and sarcophagi depict scenes from sports and circus games. Discus throwers, wrestlers and chariot racers come to life in stone. The ancient works of art sit in niches or on pedestals and altars grouped around a large marble chariot that occupies the entire central space of the area.

The name comes from the huge marble candelabra, together with the coloured marble columns that divide the space into six parts. It was built between 1785 and 1788 under Pope Pius VI Braschi, but it was actually rebuilt during the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII Pecci. (1878-1903).

This is when you see all the decoration today. The new design was the work of Annibale Angelini, who commissioned Domenico Torti and Ludwig Seitz to make the paintings, while Giuseppe Rinaldi and Luigi Medici made the marble inlays. The works were arranged almost like furniture, according to symmetrical principles that corresponded to the architecture of the gallery, which is accessed through its monumental bronze gates, still intact today.