Art: Forgotten Frescoes

The modern world has never seen more than a faded hint of the magnificent frescoes executed by Raphael for the Vatican Palace's second-floor loggia. For three centuries after they were painted, the gallery's 13 bays had no windows; wind and rain tore at the pictures. Man was even more cruel: the frescoes were mutilated during the sack of Rome in 1527, later by Napoleon's troops in 1798; since then they have been botched by well-meaning restorers.

Last June workmen repairing a building connected to the loggia probed a wall which Pope Paul III had put up across one end of the gallery in 1534 to strengthen its terminal arch. As the brick came away, they got a glimpse of bright design and glowing colors. For six months Dr. Deoclecio Redig de Campos, an assistant director of the Vatican's museums, bossed the delicate job of stripping away the rest of the wall, and last week he announced his discovery. Behind the bricks were two long, thin (12 ft. by 11 in.) sections of Raphael's original frescoes that had been forgotten for 400 years—swirling arabesques of lions' heads, leaves, flowers, crabs, human faces, all shining with their original vividness.

Said Dr. de Campos: "What we have seen in the loggia until now is only a pale shadow of the splendid promenade intended for the Pope. It would always have remained a shadow if a providential discovery had not restored a little of the old light."