Caravaggio’s Deposition

Caravaggio strove to outdo Michelangelo’s Pietà by making his Mary old and tired. Rather than a slender slip of a Christ, Caravaggio’s muscular Jesus is so heavy (emphasized by a diagonal composition) that Nicodemus struggles with his legs and John’s grasp opens Christ’s wound (see Caravaggio’s Deposition).

Raphael’s Transfiguration

Raphael’s towering masterpiece and his final work was found, almost finished, in his studio when he died. It is the pinnacle of his talent as a synthesist, mixing Perugino’s clarity, Michelangelo’s colour palette and twisting figures, and Leonardo’s composition (see Raphael’s Rooms).

Michelangelo’s Pietà

The Renaissance is known for naturalism, but Michelangelo warped this for artistic effect. Here, Mary is too young, her dead son, achingly thin and small, laid across her voluminous lap. Hearing the work being attributed to better known sculptors, the artist crept into the chapel of St Peter’s one night and carved his name in the band across the Virgin’s chest (see Pietà).

Raphael’s School of Athens

When Raphael first cast his contemporary artists as Classical thinkers in this imaginary setting, one was missing. After he saw the Sistine ceiling Michelangelo was painting down the hall, Raphael added the troubled genius, sulking on the steps, as Heraclitus (see Raphael’s Rooms).

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel

Although he considered himself a sculptor first, Michelangelo managed to turn this almost flat ceiling into a soaring vault peopled with Old Testament prophets and ignudi (nude men). He did it virtually alone, firing all of his assistants save one to help him grind pigments (see Sistine Chapel Works).

Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne

Rarely has marble captured flowing, almost liquid movement so gracefully. Bernini freezes time, wind-blown hair and cloak, in the instant the fleeing nymph is wrapped in bark and leaves, transformed into a laurel by her sympathetic river god father (see Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne).

Caravaggio’s Calling of St Matthew

Caravaggio uses strong chiaroscuro techniques here. As a naturalistic shaft of light spills from Christ to his chosen chronicler, St Matthew, Caravaggio captures the precise moment of Matthew’s conversion from tax collector to Evangelist (see San Luigi dei Francesi).

Leonardo da Vinci’s St Jerome

Barely sketched out, yet compelling for its anatomical precision and compositional experimentation. Jerome forms a spiral that starts in the mountains, runs across the cave entrance and lion’s curve, up the saint’s outstretched right arm, then wraps along his left arm and hand into the centre (see Leonardo da Vinci’s St Jerome).

Michelangelo’s Moses

This wall monument is a pale shadow of the elaborate tomb for Julius II that Michel-angelo first envisaged and for which he carved this figure. Some claim there is a self-portrait in the beard and what are commonly thought to be horns may have been an attempt to create a radiating light effect (see San Pietro in Vincoli).

Bernini’s Ecstasy of St Teresa

The saint here is being pierced by a smirking angel’s lance, and is Bernini at his theatrical best. He sets this religious ecstasy on a stage flanked by opera boxes from which members of the commissioning Cornaro family look on (see Santa Maria della Vittoria).