The Map Gallery

In the early 16th century, when popes and princes sought in every way to show off their wealth and education, it became fashionable in Italy to decorate palaces, monasteries, and villas with cycles of maps. The most important cycle is the Gallery of Maps, in the Vatican Museums in Rome.

Pope Gregory XlII commissioned a group of artists and scientists, among them, the Dominican friar and mathematician Egnazio Danti, for the project. They decorated a 120-meter corridor in the Belvedere courtyard with 40 huge, brightly colored frescoed maps each representing a region and islands of Italy. 

Each map measured about 300 x 400 cm and was arranged in the gallery in such a way as to give the illusion of walking across Italy from north to south, with the Tyrrhenian regions on the eastern side and the Adriatic regions on the western side, while biblical scenes adorn the vault.

Pellegrino Danti, born in Perugia to a family of painters, studied theology as a young man. In 1555 he joined the Dominican order and changed his name to Egnazio.

Driven by a passion for the study of mathematics and geography, Danti moved to Florence in 1563 at the invitation of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, where he taught mathematics. There he was also commissioned for his first major cartographic project: 53 maps, globes and paintings for the Guardaroba in Palazzo Vecchio. 

After his success in Florence, Danti was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna. Invited to Rome by Pope Gregory XIII to work on the reform of the so-called Gregorian Calendar, he was commissioned to oversee the drawings for a series of regional maps that would decorate the new Map Gallery in the Vatican.

In addition to his mathematical cartographic duties Danti was a highly respected and esteemed bishop for his good works on behalf of the poor in southern Italy.

1. The Battle of Lepanto.

At the bottom of the gallery a historical map shows the naval victory of the "Holy League" over the Turkish fleet near Lepanto in the Ionian Sea in October 1571. The victory was interpreted as a sign of divine intervention and the papacy took credit for it, commemorating it with the feast day of "Our Lady of Victory."

2. Milan in History

Danti's maps often showed important historical events that took place in the same territory in different periods. The Milan map pays little attention to the city, but focuses on at least three important battles that took place in the region: that between Hannibal and Scipio in 218 BC, the defeat of the Lombards by Charlemagne in 774 AD, and the French defeat at Pavia in 1525.

3. Map of the "Falminia"

The Via Flaminia was a road from Rome through the Apennines to Rimini. Here Julius Caesar crossed the Rubocone River with his army in 49 B.C. triggering civil war in Republican Rome. This decisive moment in Roman history is depicted in the center of the map. On the obelisk the event is commemorated.

4. Perugia

In the late 1970s, Danti executed a relief of his hometown. The fresco is rich in detail, cartouches, wind roses, and insets with city plans. It also depicts Hannibal's victory over the Romans in 217 B.C. at Trasimeno.

5. Campania

In addition to a plan of Naples, the Battle of Garigliano (915 AD) in which the Christian forces of Pope John X defeated a Saracen army of the Fatimid caliphate that had colonized the region is painted.

6. Map of Italy

The map cycle begins with two representations of the peninsula on either side of the gallery's southern entrance: one shows ancient Italy (antiqua) and the other modern Italy (nova). The intertwining of classical and contemporary Italian worlds, paganism and Catholicism, is found throughout the frescoes.