have been very extensive, for a catalogue which Platina prepared, or perhaps only signed, on the day of his election, enumerates 2527 volumes, of which 770 were Greek and 1757 Latin[1]. The number of the latter had more than doubled in the twenty years that had elapsed since the death of Nicholas V., an augmentation due, in all probability, to the activity of Sixtus himself.
The place selected to contain this extensive collection was the ground-floor of a building which had been erected by Nicholas V. The position of it, and its relations to neighbouring structures will be understood from the accompanying plan (fig. 1), which I borrow from M. Fabre's paper. In the present arrangement of the Vatican the building with which we are concerned extends across the south end of the court of the Belvedere (Cortile basso del Belvedere) for about three-quarters of the distance from east to west; but in the fifteenth century, before the galleries connecting the palace with the Belvedere were built, the site of this court was laid out as a garden, and neither the Torre Borgia at the west end of the building of which I am speaking, nor certain other constructions at the opposite end, between it and what is now the Cortile di San Damaso, had been erected; so that the north façade was much more free and better lighted than it is at present. M. Fabre draws attention to the interesting historical and artistic associations of this building. The ground-floor became celebrated as the Library of the Vatican; the first-floor as the Appartimento Borgia, decorated by Pinturricchio; and the second floor as the Stanze of Raphael.
The entrance to the rooms on the ground-floor is on the south side, from the small back court called Cortile del Papagallo[2]. In the fifteenth century this court was of larger extent,
- ↑ Ibid. p. 141. The catalogue is printed pp. 159—250.
- ↑ The name is derived from the frescoes with which its external walls were decorated during the reign of Pius IV. (1559–1565). They represented palm trees, on which parrots (papagalli) and other birds were perching. Fragments of these frescoes are still to be seen. The court beyond this "del Portoncin di Ferro" was so called from an iron gate by which the passage into it from the Cortile del Papagallo could be closed.
