Il Belvedere Vaticano come residenza di artisti nel Cinquecento | The Vatican Belvedere as a Residential Complex for Artists in the 16th Century

Abstract

This paper is the first to consider the Vatican Belvedere as a place of study for artists who resided and worked there for different periods of time, developing works in progress. These were spaces where they could work away from the narrowness of the workshop, coming into contact with the art of other masters and antiquity. The prestigious location also attracted the interest of their patrons and colleagues in their artistic process. As a studio from Leonardo onwards, as a multi-sensory space, an echo of the Garden of San Marco and an academy in the case of Bandinelli, then Bramante, van Scorel, Benvenuto della Volpaia, Michelangelo, Montorsoli, Meleghino, Vignola and Salviati, lived and worked there in the first half of the 16th century; in the second half of the century, Prospero Fontana, Veltroni, Girolamo da Carpi and Spranger. Giorgio Vasari was given large rooms for himself and his school, which he used to prepare his Vatican works for Pious V, and then to create the graphic apparatus for both the Sala Regia and the Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, under the exceptional oversight of Gregory XIII.