Stanza dell’Incendio di Borgo Vault – Vatican Museums – Vatican City
The frescoes in the Stanza dell’Incendio di Borgo were realized as part of the decorative campaign commissioned by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere once he became Pope Julius II and moved over the apartment Borgia; here the greatest artists of Renaissance worked, such as Perugino, Luca Signorelli, Bramante, Baldassarre Peruzzi, and others.
Perugino was commissioned to fresco the seat of the Signatura gratiae, the Papal Tribunal, for which he elaborated a complex iconographic program based on divine justice emanated through the Church; however, Julius II then decided to commission the work exclusively to Raphael. Perugino then realized only the paintings on the vault, depicting Christ between Mercy and Justice, Father enthroned among angels and cherubim, Christ as Sol Iustitiae and Christ tempted by the devil, Trinity among the apostles. These frescoes, even if of lower quality, appear very similar to those realized in the Nobile Collegio del Cambio in Perugia eight years before.
The decoration is preserved at the Vatican Museums, Stanza dell’Incendio di Borgo.
