page_title: Raphael Rooms
section_title: Deliverance of Saint Peter
hierarchical_section_title: Raphael Rooms / Stanza di Eliodoro / Deliverance of Saint Peter
context_page_description: The four Raphael Rooms form a suite of reception rooms, now part of the Vatican Museums in Vatican City. They are famous for their frescoes, painted by Raphael and his workshop. Together with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes, they are the grand fresco sequences that mark the High Renaissance in Rome.
  The Stanze, as they are commonly called, were originally intended as a suite of apartments for Pope Julius II. He commissioned Raphael, then a relatively young artist from Urbino, and his studio in 1508 or 1509 to redecorate the existing interiors of the rooms entirely. It was possibly Julius' intent to outshine the apartments of his predecessor Pope Alexander VI, as the Stanze are directly above Alexander's Borgia Apartment. They are on the third floor, overlooking the south side of the Belvedere Courtyard.
  Running from east to west, as a visitor would have entered the apartment, but not following the sequence in which the Stanze were frescoed, the rooms are the Sala di Costantino, the Stanza di Eliodoro, the Stanza della Segnatura, and the Stanza dell'Incendio del Borgo.
  After the death of Julius in 1513, with two rooms frescoed, Pope Leo X continued the program.
context_section_description: The Deliverance of Saint Peter shows, in three episodes, how Saint Peter was liberated from prison by an angel, as described in Acts 12.  It symbolizes the power of the Vicar of Christ to escape human restraints. Julius II's titular church as cardinal, before he was elevated to the papacy, had been S. Pietro in Vincoli (St. Peter in Chains), so the painting is at once a general reference to the papacy and a specific reference to Julius.  The fresco is a study in light:  natural moonlight, man-made torchlight, and God-provided angel light.  It is the latter, of course, that outshines the others.
caption: Raphael, Deliverance of Saint Peter, 1514
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