The Cardinal and Theological Virtues

Painted in 1511, this wall holds three popes, one reigning and two still to come. Below, to the right of the window, Gregory IX receives the Decretals, the book of church law issued in his name in 1234, and he has the face of Julius II, who commissioned the room. The two cardinals beside him are portraits as well. One is Giovanni de' Medici, who two years later became Leo X and took over these rooms. The other is Alessandro Farnese, elected in 1534 as Paul III, the pope who would set Michelangelo to the Last Judgment.

Above, in the lunette, Raphael painted three of the cardinal virtues as seated women. Fortitude holds an oak branch, the emblem of Julius's family, the della Rovere, whose name means oak. Prudence has a second face looking backwards, and Temperance holds a set of reins. Small winged children around them stand for Faith, Hope and Charity.

The matching scene on the other side of the window, where the emperor Justinian receives the Pandects, the great digest of Roman law, is credited by the Vatican to Lorenzo Lotto, a Venetian painter who was paid in March 1509 for work in the pope's upper rooms.