Omaha daily bee., 1896-08-15
THE VATICAN.
Marion Crawford Describes the
Grent rnpnI Palace.

Marion Crawford Describes the
GREAT rnpnt Palace.
To the average stranger the Vatican
suggests only the museum OF sculpture, the
picture galleries and the Loggle. writes Mar
ion Crawford in the Century. He remem-
bers. besides the objects OF art which he
has seen, the fact OF having walked a great
distance through straight corridors. up and
down short flights Of marble steps, and
through irregularly shaped and unsyrametri-
cally disposed halls. II he had any idea OF
the points OF the compass when he entered
he is completely confused in five minutes
and comes out at last with the sensation OF
having been walking in a labyrinth. He Will
find 1t hard to give any one an impression OF
the sort OF building In which he has been.
and certainly he cannot have any knowledge
Of the typographical relations OF its parts.
Yet in his passage through the museums and
galleries he has seen but a very small part
Of the whole. and. excepting when in the
Loggie, he probably could not once have
stood still and pointed in the direction OF
the main part of the palace.
In order to speak even supericially OF 1t
all. 1t is Indispensable to classify its parts In
some way. Vast and irregular 1t is at Its
two ends, toward the colonnade and toward
the bastions OF the city, but the intervening
stretch consists OF two perfectly parallel
buildings. each over $50 yards long, about
eighty yards apart and yoked in the middle
by the Braccio Nuovo of the museum and
a part Of the library, so as to inclose two
vast courts, the one known as the Belve-
dere-not to be confused with the Belve-
dere in the museum-and the other called
the Garden OF the Pigna, from the bronze
pine cone which stands at one end of II.
Across these parallel buildings. and to-
ward the city, a huge pile Is erected, about
| 200 yards long, very irregular, and con-
tanning the papal residence and the apart
ments of several cardinals, the Sistine
chapel. tho Pauline chapel. the Borgia tower.
the Stance and Loggie of Raphael, and the
court of st Damascus. At the other end OF
the paralellogram are grouped the equally
irregular but more beautiful buildings OF
the old museum, OF which the windows look
out over the walls OF the city, and which
originally received the name of Belvedere
on account of the lovely view, This is said
to have been a sort of summer house OF the
Borgia, not then connected with the palace
by the long galleries.
1t would be a hopeless and a weary task
to attempt to trace the history of the build
ings. The pope's private apartments &C.
cupy the eastern wing OF the part built
round the court of st. Damascus; that is to
say, they are at the extreme end of the
Vatican, nearest the city, and over the colon
made, and the windows of the pope's rooms
are visible from the square. The vast mass
which rises above the columns TO the right
of st. Peters is only a small part Of the
whole palace. but is not the most modern
by any means. 1t contains, for instance,
the Sistine chapel, which is considerably
older than the present church, having been
built by Sixtus ". whose beautiful bronze
monument is in the Chapel of the Sacra-
ment. 1t contains, too, Raphael's Stance,
or halls. and Bramante's famous Loggie.
the beautiful architecture of which is a
frame for some of Raphael's best work.
But any good guide book will furnish all
such information, which 1t would be fruit
less to give in such a paper as this. In
the pages of Murray the traveller will find.
set down in order and accurately, the ages.
the dimensions. and the exact positions of
all the parts Of the building. with the names
of the famous artists who decorated each.
He will not find set down there, however,
what one may call the atmosphere of the
place, which is something as peculiar and
unforgetable, though in a different way.
as that of st. Peters. 1t is quite unlike
anything else. for it is part of the develop
ment of churchmen's administration to an
ultimate limit in the high center OF church.
manism. No doubt there was much of that
sort of thing in various parts of Europe
long ago, and in England before Henry VIII,
and it is to be found in a small degree in
Vienna to this day, where the traditions
of the Holy Roman empire are not quite
dead. 1t is hard to define it, but it Is in
everything; in the uniforms of the attend
ants, in their old fashioned faces. in the
spotless cleanliness of all the Vatican
though no one is ever to be seen handling
a broom-in the noiselessly methodical man
ner Of doing everything that is to be done,
in the scholarly rather than scientific ar
rangement of the objects in the museum and
ga~lleries-above all, in the visitors own
sensations.
No one talks loudly among the statutes OF
the Vatican. and there is a feeling of being
in church. so that one Is disagreeably
shocked when a guide, conducting a party
of tourists, occasionally raises his voice in
order to be heard. 1t is all very hard to
define, while ii is quite impossible to es-
cape feeling it, and it must ultimately be
due TO the dominating influence of the
churchmen, who arrange the whole place
as though ii were a church. An American
lady, Cr hearing that the Vatican ~csrtains
II 900 rooms. threw up her hands and laugh
ingly exclaimed. Think of the housemaidsl'
But there are no housemaids in the Vati'
can. and perhaps the total absence Of even
the humblest feminine influence has some
thing to do with the austere impression
which everything produces.
On the whole the Vatican may be divided
into seven portions. These are the pontifr
cal residence, the Sistine and Pauline chap
els, the picture galleries. the library, tn,
museums of sculpture and archaeology. thu
outbuildings, including the barracks OF tn
Swiss Guards, and, lastly, the gardens will
I the pOpe's casino. OF these the Sistin'
chapel, the galleries end museums. ant
the library arc incomparably the most i'm
portant.
/, The name Sistine is derived from Sixtu
", as has been said. The library wa
founded by Nicholas V. whose love OF book
was almost equal 10 his passion for build
ing. The galleries are representative OF Ra
phael's work, which predominates to suel
, an extent that the paintings Of almost al
i, other artists are of secondary importance
4 precisely as MiCbaelangelo filled the Slstin
! chapel with himself. AS for the museum
q the objects they contain have been accumu
lated by many popes, but their e~xistenc
. ought, perhaps, to be chiefly attributes
o to Julius II and Leo X, the principal rep
2 resentatives OF the Revere and Medici fam
lilies.
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