This article introduces source texts and images that support a new analysis of the iconography of the Theology (‘Disputa’) fresco, and the proposition that it was conceived as the visual and conceptual centerpiece of the Stanza della Segnatura (1508-11). Featuring the Pope and his retinue as unfettered travelers in both space and time, the room is nothing less than an apparatus of "turning," of (re)orientation and conversion: it virtually turns the visitors-both inside and outside the walls-towards the Temple in Jerusalem. The visitor to the room is meant to be whirled around by it, as the four murals in the Stanza di Eliodoro, in my argument, are far from four static and separate scenes, but pictures in which figures and ideas move around with their drastic theatricality and fluidity. How would she orient herself in this room of hyper dynamism, complex temporality, and hybrid geography? In this paper, I invite both the fictional early modern visitor and the reader to follow the indications of the frescoes themselves, as I unfold an interpretation of the movements, rotations, and turns that unite this room. Imagine a sixteenth-century foreign visitor to the Vatican being ushered into the Stanza di Eliodoro, frescoed and redecorated by Raphael and his workshop in 1511-14.
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