The preservation of these rooms is due to their having been for so long shut up. Pope Julius, moved partly by reprobation of the crimes of his predecessor, partly by hatred of the whole house of Borgia, refused to live in the apartments; but at the end of the sixteenth century the nephews of Leo XI. used them for a time. For two centuries they seem to have been uninhabited, and the Abbé Taja in 1750 laments this abandonment, and deplores their loss to all lovers of the fine arts. Later, in the eighteenth century, we learn from Chattard[23] that they were used for the meals of cardinals and officials who assembled during Holy Week. In 1816, when, in consequence of the peace of Tolentino, the precious collection of pictures was sent back from Paris, some of them were collected in the Borgia apartments, and the marble cross-bars of the windows were replaced by iron ones to give more light. The light was, however, so bad that the pictures were removed, and a miscellaneous museum and library took their place.
[23] _Nuova descrizione del Vaticano_, ii. 58.
In 1891 the present Pope, Leo XIII., moved the library, and the delicate task of restoration began. The book-shelves and marbles had cracked and destroyed the plaster in places, and in the time of Pius VII. some varnish had been applied to the ceilings, making a sort of crust. The restoration has been carried out with the greatest care under the direction of Signor Lodovico Seitz, and has fortunately been restricted to repairing the plaster and stucco, and to cleaning the frescoes from dust and damp. Though in some parts of the fifth and sixth halls the stucco has been taken off, the walls reconstructed, and the surface refixed, it has been done with such nicety that no mark is perceptible, and retouching, with one or two trifling exceptions, has been absolutely tabooed. What repainting there is dates from the time of Pius VII., but is fortunately slight. This applies to the actual paintings.
Most of the decorations of the lower walls have been repainted, following the fragmentary traces that remained, or, where these were quite obliterated, they have been replaced with harmonious hangings. The minor decorations of the halls are a study in themselves, and are the more interesting as it is evident that the artist has superintended the whole, subordinating the marble work, the painting of the lower panels, and even the tiled floor to suit his scheme of colour.