Pinacoteca Art Gallery
Room XV 18th Century
Astronomical Observations
Vatican City
Rome Italy
2016

The series of astronomical observations was commissioned in 1711

Donato Creti, (Cremona 1671 - Bologna 1749)
Astronomical observations, 1711
Oil on canvas, each panel 51 x 35 cm
Cat. 40432 - 40439


Donato Creti, Astronomical observations
The series of Astronomical observations was commissioned in 1711 by the Bolognese count Luigi Marsili. He had the artist Donato Creti paint all the planets in as many small pictures and made a gift of these to the Pope to convince him of the importance for the Holy Church of an astronomical observatory. The gift made it possible to achieve his goal, because with the support of Clement XI (pontiff from 1700 to 1721) the first public astronomical observatory was opened in Bologna a short time later. The eight small canvases show the planetary system as it was then known: the Sun (cat.40432), the Moon (cat.40433), Mercury (cat.40434), Venus (cat.40435), Mars (cat.40436), Jupiter (cat.40437), Saturn (cat.40438) and a Comet (cat.40439). The planet Uranus, only discovered in 1781, is missing. The presence of the planets is dominant in the composition. They are depicted as observed with telescopes and various optical instruments (for which the artist had precise instructions) by small human figures in eighteenth century clothes, reabsorbed into the vastness of the nocturnal scene.


Pinacoteca
The new Vatican Pinacoteca (Art Gallery) was inaugurated on 27 October 1932 in the building especially constructed by the architect Luca Beltrami for Pius XI. It was built in the nineteenth century Square Garden, isolated and completely surrounded by avenues, in a place considered suitable for assuring the best lighting conditions for both the correct preservation of the works and their optimum aesthetic enhancement. Thus the age-old question of the exhibition of the paintings, which were constantly moved around the Apostolic Palaces due to the lack of a setting that matched their importance, was solved. A first collection of only 118 precious paintings was created by Pope Pius VI around 1790. It was of short duration due to the fact that, following the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) some of the greatest masterpieces were transferred to Paris. The idea of an art gallery, understood in the modern sense as an exhibition open to the public, was only born in 1817 after the fall of Napoleon and the consequent return to the Church State of a large part of the works belonging to it, according to the directions of the Congress of Vienna. The collection continued to grow over the years through donations and purchases until it reached the current nucleus of 460 paintings, distributed among the eighteen rooms on the basis of chronology and school, from the so-called Primitives (12th - 13th century) to the 19th century. The collection contains some masterpieces of the greatest artists of the history of Italian painting, from Giotto to Fra Angelico, from Melozzo da Forlì to Perugino and to Raphael, from Leonardo to Tiziano, to Veronese, to Caravaggio and to Crespi.