A carrousel in the Cortile del Belvedere, 1565: Étienne du Perac has exaggerated the vertical dimensions, but Bramante's sequence of monumental axially-planned stairs are visible.

Donato Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere, the Courtyard of the Belvedere, designed from 1506 onwards, was a major project of the High Renaissance at Rome, reverberating in its details in courtyards, formalized piazzas and garden plans throughout Western Europe for centuries. Bramante himself never saw it completed, and within the century it had been irretrievably altered by a bisecting wall. http://vandyck. ... http://vandyck. ... Donato Bramante Donato Bramante (1444 – March 11, 1514) was an Italian architect, who introduced the Early Renaissance style to Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rome, where his most famous design was St. ... The Creation of Adam, Michelangelos work in the Sistine Chapel. ... A piazza is an open square in a city, often used as a marketplace, found in Italy. ...

It was also at one point the home of the papal menagerie. It was on the lower portion of the courtyard that Pope Leo X would parade his prized elephant Hanno for adoring crowds to see. Because of the pachyderm glorious history he was buried in the Cortile del Belvedere. ^[1] Pope Leo X, born Giovanni di Lorenzo de Medici (11 December 1475 – 1 December 1521) was Pope from 1513 to his death. ... Hanno is a name that can refer to the following entities: Hanno the elephant, Pope Leo Xs pet Hanno the Elder, Carthaginian general Hanno the Great, Carthaginian general Hanno the Navigator, Carthaginian explorer Hanno the Rab, Carthaginian politician Hanno von Sangerhausen, great master of the Teutonic Knights Hanno crater...

History

Innocent VIII began construction at the site, high ground overlooking old St Peter's Basilica, in 1484. Here, where the breezes could tame the Roman summer, by 1487 he had the Florentine architect Antonio Pollaiuolo, design and complete a little summerhouse, which also offered spectacular views to the east of central Rome and north to the pastures beyond the Castel Sant'Angelo (the Prati di Castello). This villa suburbana was the first pleasure house to be built in Rome since Antiquity.^[2] Innocent VIII, né Giovanni Battista Cibo (1432 – July 25, 1492), pope from 1484 to 1492, was born at Genoa, and was the son of Aran Cibo who under Calixtus III had been a senator at Rome. ... Interior view, with the nave of the Cattedra in the back St. ... Apollo and Daphne by Antonio Pollaiuolo Antonio di Jacopo Pollaiuolo (c. ... For the town with the same name, see Castel SantAngelo (RI) Castel SantAngelo from the bridge. ... The Albertian Villa Medici in Fiesole: terraced grounds on a sloping site. ...

When Pope Julius II came to the papacy in 1503, he moved his growing collection of Roman sculpture here, to an enclosed courtyard within the villa Belvedere itself. The Laocoon sculpture, soon after discovery, was purchased by Julius and brought here by 1506. Shortly after its discovery, the statue of Apollo was also brought here, henceforth to be known as the Apollo Belvedere, as was the heroic male torso known as the Belvedere Torso. Julius commissioned Bramante to formalize a plan to link the Vatican Palace and the Belvedere. Bramante's design as he left it is commemorated in a fresco at Castel Sant'Angelo: he regularized the slope as a set of terraces, linked by rigorously symmetrical stairs on the axis, to create a sequence of formal spaces that was unparalleled in Europe, both in its scale and in its architectural unity. A series of six narrow terraces at the base was traversed by a monumental central stair leading to the wide middle terrace^[3]. The divided stair to the uppermost terrace, with flights running on either side against the retaining wall to a landing and returning towards the center, was another innovation by Bramante. His long corridor-like wings that enclose the Cortile now house the Vatican Museums collections. One of the wings hosted the Vatican Library. They begin as three storeys and end in a single one enclosing the uppermost terrace. The whole scenography climaxed in the hemicircular exedra at the Belvedere, set into a screening wall devised by Bramante to disguise the fact the villa facade did not parallel its facing Vatican Palace facade. The unique ensemble was designed to be best seen from Raphael's Stanze in the papal apartments, a view exaggerated in the engraving (illustration, above right) made to commemorate the festive carrousel celebrating the marriage of one of Pius IV's nephews in 1565.. The illustration reverses the drawing it was made from: the court where the sculptures were displayed appears in the engraving at upper left instead of upper right. Pope Julius II (December 5, 1443 – February 21, 1513), born Giuliano della Rovere, was Pope from 1503 to 1513. ... Laocoön (Greek Λαοκοων, pronounced roughly La-oh-koh-on), son of Acoetes, was allegedly a priest of Poseidon (or of Apollo, by some accounts) at Troy; he is famous for warning the Trojans in vain against accepting the Trojan Horse from the Greeks, and for his subsequent divine execution. ... The Apollo Belvedere, also called the Pythian Apollo, is a celebrated marble sculpture from Classical Antiquity. ... Drawing of the Belvedere Torso; Michelangelos The Last Judgement. ... The Palace of the Vatican, also called the Papal Palace or the Apostolic Palace, is the official residence of the Pope in the Vatican City. ... For the town with the same name, see Castel SantAngelo (RI) Castel SantAngelo from the bridge. ... An exedra adopted by James Cameron for a neoclassical interior space, at the Hermitage In architecture an exedra is a semicircular recess, often crowned by a half-dome, which is usually set into a buildings facade. ... The Raphael Rooms (also called the Raphael Stanze or, in Italian, Stanze di Raffaello) in the Palace of the Vatican are papal apartments with frescoes painted by the Italian artist Raphael and his workshop. ... Carrousel is a booklet published in 1987 containing three short texts written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1923 for Karussel, a Russian cabaret. ... Pius IV, né Giovanni Angelo Medici (March 31, 1499 – December 9, 1565), pope from 1559 to 1565, was born of humble parentage in Milan, unrelated with the Medicis of Florence. ...

This 1st century Roman bronze Pigna ("pinecone") gives the name Cortile della Pigna to the highest terrace; it was a Roman fountain.

The Courtyard was incomplete when Bramante died in 1514. It was finished by Pirro Ligorio for Pius IV in 1562–65. Pirro took the great open-headed exedra at the center of Bramante's Belvedere and added a third storey, enclosing the central space with a vast half-dome to form the largest niche that had been erected since Antiquity— the nicchione visible today from several elevated outlooks around Rome (illustration). He completed his structure with an uppermost loggia that repeated the hemicycle of the niche and took its cue from scholarly reconstructions of the Roman temple complex dedicated to Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste, south of Rome. Pirro Ligori, (1510? - 1583) Italian architect, antiquarian and garden designer. ... Pius IV, né Giovanni Angelo Medici (March 31, 1499 - December 9, 1565), pope from 1559 to 1565, was born of humble parentage in Milan. ... An exedra adopted by James Cameron for a neoclassical interior space, at the Hermitage In architecture an exedra is a semicircular recess, often crowned by a half-dome, which is usually set into a buildings facade. ... Florentine Renaissance painter Filippo Lippi placed his Madonna of the 1440s within a simulated shell-headed niche The niche in classical architecture is an exedra or an apse that has been reduced in size, retaining the half-dome heading usual for an apse. ... Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, which begins roughly with the earliest-recorded Greek poetry of Homer (7th century BC), and continues through the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th century AD... Fortuna governs the circle of the four stages of life, the Wheel of Fortune, in a manuscript of Carmina Burana In Roman mythology, Fortuna (equivalent to the Greek goddess Tyche) goddess of fortune, was the personification of luck, hopefully of good luck, but she could be represented veiled and blind... This article deals with the ancient town, for the composer see: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Palestrina (ancient Praeneste) was and is a very ancient city of Latium (modern Lazio) 23 miles (37 km) east of Rome, and was reached by the Via Praenestina (see below). ...

Sphere Within Sphere by Pomodoro in the Cortile della Pigna

The lowest, and largest level of the court was not planted. It was cobbled and paved with a saltire of stones laid corner to corner; it had semi-permanent bleachers set against the Vatican walls and was used for outdoor entertainments, pageants and carousels such as the festive early 17th-century joust depicted in a painting in Museo di Roma, Palazzo Braschi. The upper two levels were laid out in the simple form of patterned parterres that the Italians referred to as compartimenti, set in wide gravelled walkways. The four sections (now grassed) of the upper courtyard have the same pattern that appears in 16th century engravings. Palazzo Braschi is a large, late Roccoco palace in Rome, Italy. ... A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing pattern. ...

Sixtus V spoiled the unity of the Cortile (1585-90) by erecting the wing for the Vatican Library, which occupies the former middle terrace and bisects the space. James Ackerman has suggested that the move was a conscious one, designed to screen the secular, even pagan nature of the Cortile and the collection of sculptures that Pope Adrian VI had referred to as "idols". Today the lowest terrace is still called the Cortile del Belvedere, but the separated upper terrace is called the Cortile della Pigna because of the colossal Roman bronze pinecone, once a fountain, that occupies the center of the niche. Pope Sixtus V (December 13, 1521 – August 27, 1590), born Felice Peretti, was Pope from 1585 to 1590. ... Pope Adrian VI (Utrecht, March 2, 1459 – September 14, 1523), born Adriaan Florenszoon Boeyens, son of Floris Boeyens, served as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1522 until his death. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Logo of the rione Pigna is the name of rione IX of Rome, Italy. ...

In 1990, a sculpture of two concentric spheres by Arnaldo Pomodoro was placed in the middle of the courtyard. ^[4] Sphere Within Sphere by Pomodoro in Trinity College, Dublin Arnaldo Pomodoro is an Italian sculptor. ...

Notes

A Roman villa is a villa that was built or lived in during the Roman Empire. ... Pope Sixtus V (December 13, 1521 – August 27, 1590), born Felice Peretti, was Pope from 1585 to 1590. ...

References

• James Ackerman, 1964. The Cortile del Belvedere (London: Thames & Hudson)
• Roberto Piperno, "Giardino e Casino Pontificio del Belvedere": the Cortile as seen by Giuseppe Vasi
• Riccardo Cigola, "Cortile della Pigna"

Coordinates: 41°54′15″N, 12°27′17″E Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...