A Room with Many Conversations

The Stanza della Segnatura is an elegant, modest-sized room on the second floor of the Vatican palace (now the Musei Vaticani) designed to house Pope Julius II's personal library. The room was decorated by Raphael in the early years of the sixteenth century. Like many great works of art, Raphael's Stanza asks the visitor to stay awhile, to dwell with it, a proposal particularly apt for a library. Art historian Timothy Verdon distinguishes the Renaissance visitor from today's typical learned viewer: “Renaissance visitors to the Stanza della Segnatura ‘registered’ the frescoes with their eyes and ‘read’ them with mind and heart—poetic processes that differed substantially … from those with which modern art historians read them” (Verdon 116–17). As we shall see, the walls of the Stanza portray many conversations, inviting the viewer to be part of them.

The paintings of this room tell two stories. One is the story of the characters depicted, for the most part “heroes” who played important roles in the tradition of ancient classical learning. This learning was in the process of recovery by Renaissance scholars, builders, poets, and artists. The second story is that of the three men most responsible for the room's program and embellishments: the program's inventor, Tommaso “Fedra” Inghirami (1470–1516); its painter, Raphael Sanzio (1483–1520); and its patron, Pope Julius II (1443–1513, r. 1503–13). What is expressed on the room's frescoed walls and ceiling is informed by the humanism that developed in papal Rome during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Every least detail of Raphael's painting fits into a unified program that portrays the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual aspirations of Rome's renewal after a long period of decline. Part of the wonder and delight of visiting the Stanza is understanding what it all signifies.

In this regard, scholars in the last half of the twentieth century have greatly advanced our understanding of the Renaissance humanism specific to Rome, including questions of the influence of humanism on artistic programs such as that of the Stanza. John F. D’Amico and John W. O’Malley are just two among these scholars.