Jacob's dream of the ladder to heaven

In the second half of 1511 Pope Julius II was back in Rome after losing Bologna, and the room Raphael began painting for him in the Vatican took up one theme, God stepping in to protect his Church. On the vault four Old Testament scenes show God appearing to the patriarchs. Here Jacob sleeps with his head on a stone while angels move up and down a staircase toward God, who breaks through the clouds against a deep blue sky. Each of the four scenes is painted to look like a tapestry hung from the ceiling with nails and rings. This one sits directly above the Liberation of Saint Peter, painted a couple of years later, where an angel wakes the apostle in his prison cell at night. The 16th-century biographer Giorgio Vasari gave the whole vault to Raphael. Later scholars have proposed other painters working in Rome at the time, among them Baldassarre Peruzzi and Lorenzo Lotto, and the fresco's worn surface makes the question hard to settle.