Justice

When Raphael began this ceiling in 1508 the room underneath it was the private library of Pope Julius II. He had refused to live in the apartments of his predecessor, the Borgia pope Alexander VI, and moved a floor up, and he already had several painters at work here, Sodoma among them. Within a year he gave the whole room to Raphael, who was 25, and had the earlier painting destroyed. Justice sits in one of four round panels, each about 180 centimetres across, looking down at the wall where Fortitude, Prudence and Temperance are painted. She holds the scales and the sword, and two putti beside her carry a line from Roman law, in the wording Justinian's jurists gave it, saying that she grants each person what is his by right. The name the room goes by came later. From 1513 it housed the papal tribunal that signed off petitions of grace and justice.