Borgia Apartment

The rooms were renovated and decorated for Alexander VI, 1492 to 1503: the Room of the Sibyls and the Room of the Creed in the Borgia Tower; the rooms of the Liberal Arts, of the Saints and of the Mysteries in the wing built by Nicholas V, 1447 to 1455, and called the secret rooms in the diary of Johannes Burckhardt; and the Room of the Pontiffs in the older wing built by Nicholas III, 1277 to 1280. Bernardino di Betto, Pinturicchio, carried out the decoration rapidly between the autumn of 1492 and the beginning of 1494 with a team including Piermatteo d'Amelia, Benedetto Bonfigli, Pietro d'Andrea and Antonio da Viterbo, il Pastura, with Bartolomeo di Giovanni and Raffaellino del Garbo on recent attributions. The technique was largely dry paint on plaster and glue rather than true fresco, as recent restoration confirmed. No contract survives, but a letter of 29 March 1493 from Alexander VI to Orvieto records Pinturicchio's transfer to the Vatican. Julius II left the apartment in 1503 and moved a floor up, and Leo XIII opened it to the public at the end of the 1800s after restoration.