Gallery of Tapestries
Vatican Museum
Rome Italy
2016

Tapestries are made of wool, silk, and silver and gold thread. By using these textile materials, the images take on a beautiful quality due to the shine from the metals and the fabrics used. The most obvious purpose of tapestries was their ornamental value. Tapestry makers were highly sought after and, on many occasions, would make more money than painters.

Besides their beautiful ornamental value, however, there was also a much more practical purpose. They were also used to warm up rooms. In the Early Middle Ages, these tapestries would have adorned the walls of drafty, old stone castles. By hanging this “rug” on the wall, it allowed the heat to be trapped in the fabric and therefore warmed up the room.

In our case in the Sistine Chapel, the tapestries absorbed the heat from the braziers that burned in the chapel. This is why when you enter the Vatican Museums today, it is one of the only rooms with air conditioning.

Woven art
There are about three hundred tapestries in the Vatican Collection – undisputed masterpieces, such as those intended for the Sistine Chapel using cartoons drawn by Raphael, or the precious cloth that portrays Da Vinci’s Last Supper given to the Pope by the King of France. These delicate, priceless works are preserved thanks to the care of expert restorers.