Raphael Vatican Frescoes. The four Raphael Rooms form a suite of reception rooms, now part of the Vatican Museums in Vatican City.
They are famous for their frescoes, painted by Raphael and his workshop. Together with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes, they are the grand fresco sequences that mark the High Renaissance in Rome.
The Stanze, as they are commonly called, were originally intended as a suite of apartments for Pope Julius II. He commissioned Raphael, then a relatively young artist from Urbino, and his studio in 1508 or 1509 to redecorate the existing interiors of the rooms entirely. It was possibly Julius' intent to outshine the apartments of his predecessor Pope Alexander VI, as the Stanze are directly above Alexander's Borgia Apartment.
They are on the third floor, overlooking the south side of the Belvedere Courtyard. Running from east to west, as a visitor would have entered the apartment, but not following the sequence in which the Stanze were frescoed, the rooms are the Sala di Costantino, the Stanza di Eliodoro, the Stanza della Segnatura, and the Stanza dell'Incendio del Borgo.
After the death of Julius in 1513, with two rooms frescoed, Pope Leo X continued the program. Following Raphael's death in 1520, his assistants Gianfrancesco Penni, Giulio Romano and Raffaellino del Colle finished the project with the frescoes in the Sala di Costantino. The scheme of the works is as