The Mass at Bolsena

In 1506, on his way north to take Bologna, Julius II stopped at Orvieto and prayed before a stained linen cloth kept in the cathedral there. It was the corporal of Bolsena, the cloth laid under the chalice at Mass. In 1263, so the story goes, a priest from Bohemia who doubted that the bread truly became Christ's body was saying Mass in the nearby lakeside town of Bolsena when the host began to bleed onto it. The next year Pope Urban IV established the feast of Corpus Christi, and Orvieto later built its great cathedral to house the relic.

In 1512 Raphael put the miracle on this wall, and put Julius in it. The wall gave him an awkward start, because a window rises into it well off-centre. He raised the altar on a flight of steps above the window and made them uneven, so the scene still balances. On the left the priest stands at the altar, staring at the host he holds. Behind him the congregation leans and crowds forward. Opposite, on the right, the pope kneels at a prayer stool, perfectly still, with four cardinals of his court behind him. Below them, in the lower right corner, kneel a group of Swiss Guards in bright uniforms. The guard was still new then. The first Swiss soldiers had marched into Rome to serve the pope in January 1506, the same year as his stop at Orvieto.