In repairing the damages age-inflicted on a work of architecture, restoration often makes enlightening discoveries that shape our understanding of the manner in which the people of a previous era designed buildings to suit their needs, and how the subsequent reshaping of that building through structural alterations reflects changes in these needs, as well as tastes, throughout time.  

Such is the case with the West Wall of the Bramante Courtyard. Second to the Nicchione North Wall, the West Wall is the tallest of the Courtyard’s four walls, rising three stories at its southernmost end. Behind the stone facade, one walks the halls of the former Vatican Library on the ground floor, and the Gallery of the Candelabra above.  Earlier this year, a pilot project commenced on the West Wall. During the initial field study funded by the Christian financial company Thrivent, the history of the Courtyard was revealed. As restorers cut into the wall, the resulting stratigraphy of a multitude of plaster and stone layers, each dated during this study, adumbrated the wall’s history as a connective, open-air walkway to the museum gallery visitors experience today.  Before the West side of the Courtyard became a definitive wall, it was an open-air loggia in the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth century the loggia was filled in with brick to compose the wall itself. It was upon this new surface that four centuries of paint coats were applied, almost always in varying shades from the original. 

The West Wall now commences the third stage of the Courtyard’s restoration, the scaffolding fully erected and the labor underway. The restoration attempts to revert the Courtyard’s walls to their original color of milk-white, as intended by Bramante.

The Georgia, Louisiana, and Canada Chapters had the opportunity to see the fruits of their donation to this monumental Courtyard during their visits to the Vatican Museums this fall. Most recently, the Canada Chapter seated themselves on the steps of the Courtyard and received a presentation of the restoration by head Vatican architect Dr. Vitale Zanchettin and Director of the Vatican Museums Dr. Barbara Jatta. Together they chose the correct shade of green paint to be used to pictorially recreate the the optical illusion of the fake window. 

The Patrons of the Arts extends our sincerest gratitude to the twenty Patron Chapters and individual donors who have generously contributed to this project, the largest restoration yet undertaken by the Patrons of the Arts in its thirty-five-year history.