Maps. Maps and Maps!

[spacedlaw]

I must admit that the exhibit that fascinated me the most in the Vatican Museums is the room of maps.

It is more or less a long corridor (with some painted cabinets à la grotesque) with maps of Italy and other territories of the church dominion. They are not always exact (the one for Corsica looks seriously upside down) and yet they make a wonderful group of paintings.

Hey!
They even have a map showing how to get to Narnia!




The first thing that attracted my attention was the beautiful wind roses:









Then I started to look at the details, trying to find places I knew of (that's how I stumbled upon Narnia).
There is Nice and the whole Côte d'Azur:



Avignon:



And the fancy details:



This is supposed to be an allegory of Columbus finding the Americas...

The decoration was immaculate:



And included some clues as to whom might have commissioned such works:





Bees! Bees are for the Barberini pope, Urban VIII (first half of the 17th Century).

For those who were tired of looking at maps, you could always check out the weird grotesque creatures on the cabinets:



The saucy butterfly girl:



Or the couple of demure batty girls



Apparently, back then, the display was shocking:



But what with all the fancy fantasy stories we read now...

Even the Cthulhu-ish ceiling decoration feels quite mundane:


 

Next bit?
I think I'll do something else than the Vatican Museums. Not that there isn't still tons of stuff to see and if you are interested you can have a look at the dedicated set on my Flickr account, but I'd rather move on.