Entries with piece tag

Inside St Peter’s

You need to be properly dressed to enter St Peter’s, which means no bare knees or shoulders – a rule that is very strictly enforced. Inside on the right is Michelangelo’s other legacy to the church, his Pietà , completed at the opposite end of his career when he was just 24. Following an attack by a vandal a few years back, it sits behind glass, strangely remote from the life of the rest of the building. Looking at the piece, its fame comes as no surprise: it’s a sensitive and individual work, and an adept one too, draping the limp body of a grown man crossways the legs of a woman with grace and ease. Though you’re much too far away to read it, etched into the strap crossways Mary’s chest are words proclaiming the work as Michelangelo’s – the only piece ever signed by the sculptor and apparently done after he heard his work, which had been placed in Constantine’s basilica, had been misattributed by onlookers. You can see it properly on the plaster cast of the statue in the Pinacoteca of the Vatican Museums. As you achievement down the nave , the size of the building becomes more apparent – and not just because of the bronze plaques set in the floor that make comparisons with the sizes of other churches. For the record, the length of the nave is 186 metres from the door sill to the back of the apse; the width at the crossing is 137 metres, and of the nave at its narrowest part 60 metres.

The dome is breathtakingly imposing, rising high above the supposed site of St Peter’s tomb. With a diameter of 44 metres it is only 1.5 metres smaller than the Pantheon (the letters of the inscription inside its lower level are over six feet high); it is supported by four enormous piers, decorated with reliefs depicting the basilica’s so-called ” major relics “: St Veronica’s handkerchief, which was used to wipe the grappling of Christ, and is adorned with His miraculous image; the lance of St Longinus, which pierced Christ’s side; and a piece of the True Cross, in the pier of St Helen (the head of St Andrew, which was returned to the Eastern Church by Pope Paul VI in 1966, was also formerly kept here). On the right side of the nave, near the pier of St Longinus, the bronze statue of St Peter is another of the most venerated monuments in the basilica, carved in the thirteenth century by Arnolfo di Cambio and with its right foot polished smooth by the attentions of pilgrims. On holy days this statue is dressed in papal tiara and vestments.

Bronze was also the material used in Bernini’s baldacchino , the centrepiece of the sculptor’s Baroque embellishment of the interior, a massive 26m high (the height, apparently, of Palazzo Farnese), cast out of 927 tonnes of metal removed from the Pantheon roof in 1633. To modern eyes, it’s an almost grotesque piece of work, with its wild spiralling columns copied from columns in the Constantine basilica. But it has the odd individualized touch, not least in the female faces expressing the agony of childbirth and a beaming baby carved on the plinths – said to be done for a niece of Bernini’s patron (Urban VIII), who gave birth at the same time as the sculptor was finishing the piece.*

Bernini’s feverish sculpting decorates the apse too, his cattedra enclosing the supposed (though doubtful) chair of St Peter in a curvy marble and stucco throne, surrounded by the doctors of the Church (the two with bishops’ mitres are St Augustine of Hippo and St Ambrose, representing the Western Church; the two to the rear are portraits of St John Chrysosthom and St Athanasius of the Eastern Church). Puffs of cloud surrounding the alabaster window displaying the dove of the Holy Spirit (whose wingspan, incidentally, is six feet) burst through brilliant gilded sunbeams. On the right, the tomb of Urban VIII , also by Bernini, is less grand but more dignified. On the left, the tomb of Paul III , by Giacomo della Porta, was moved up and down the nave of the church before it was finally placed here as a counter to that of Urban VIII. More interesting is Bernini’s monument to Alexander VII in the south transept, with its winged skeleton struggling underneath the heavy marble drapes, upon which the Chigi pope is kneeling in prayer. The grim reaper significantly clutches an hourglass – the Baroque at its most melodramatic, and symbolic. On the left sits Charity, on the right, Truth Revealed in Time; to the rear are Hope and Faith.

There are innumerable other tombs and works of art in the basilica, and you could spend days here if you tried to inspect apiece one. Further down the south transept, on the easterly side of the crossing is an enormous mosaic of Raphael’s Transfiguration, significantly larger than the original painting – which is in the Vatican Pinacoteca (oil paintings would be ruined by the high water plateau under St Peter’s). Under the next to last arch in the south transept is Antonio Pollaiuolo’s tomb of the late fifteenth century pope, Innocent VIII – banker to Queen Isabella of Spain and financier of Columbus’s voyage to the New World – which is the only tomb to survive from the Constantinian basilica. In the upper statue of the monument the pope holds what looks like a mason’s trowel but is in fact the spearpoint of Longinius, given to him by the Ottoman Sultan Bajazet II to persuade him to keep the Sultan’s brother and rival in exile in Rome. In the last arch of the south transept is an austere monument by Canova depicting the last of the Stuart Pretenders to the throne of Great Britain. Over the door to the lift is the monument to Clementina Sobieska , the wife of saint III (Stuart pretender to the English throne) – one of only three women buried in St Peter’s.

In the north transept is the wonderful gilded Baroque Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament , designed by Borromini with work by Pietro da Cortona, Domenichino and Bernini. This chapel is not open to the casual sightseer but it is worthy of a visit, which can be managed if you go there to pray along with the clergy, who maintain a vigil there during the time the basilica is open.

* The baldacchino and confessio just in front are supposed to mark the exact spot of the tomb of St Peter , and excavations early this century did indeed turn up – directly beneath the baldacchino and the remains of Constantine’s basilica – a row of Roman tombs with inscriptions confirming that the Vatican Hill was a well-known burial ground in classical times. Whether the tomb of St Peter was found is less clear: a shrine was discovered, badly damaged, that agrees with some historical descriptions of the saint’s marker, with a space in it through which ancient pilgrims placed their heads in prayer. Close by, the bones were discovered of an elderly but physically fit man, and, although these have never been claimed as the relics of the apostle, speculation has been rife. It is doable to take an English-language tour of the Vatican necropolis; contact the Vatican Information Office for details.

Category: Basilica Di San Pietro

Palazzo Nuovo

Of the two Capitoline Museum buildings, it’s the Palazzo Nuovo (on the left) that really steals the show. Just inside the entrance is the original Marcus Aurelius statue, and the first floor concentrates some of the best of the city’s Roman copies of Greek sculpture into half a dozen or so rooms and a long room crammed with elegant statuary. There’s a remarkable, controlled statue of the Dying Gaul, a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original; a naturalistic Boy with Goose – another copy; an original grappling depiction of Eros and Psyche; a Satyr Resting, after a piece by Praxiteles, that was the inspiration for Hawthorne’s book the Marble Faun; and the red marble Laughing Silenus, another Roman copy of a Greek original. Walk through, too, to the so-called Sala degli Imperatori, with its busts of Roman emperors and other famous names, including a young Augustus, a cruel Caracalla, and a portrait of Helena, the mother of Constantine, reclining gracefully. And don’t miss the Capitoline Venus, housed in a room on its own – a coy, delicate piece, again based on a work by Praxiteles.

Category: Rome

Santa Maria In Campitelli

Via dei Funari leads easterly out of Piazza Mattei towards Piazza Campitelli, where Santa Maria in Campitelli is a heavy, ornate church built by Carlo Reinaldi in 1667 to house an ancient image of the Virgin that had been deemed to have miraculous powers following respite from a plague. Everything in the church focuses on this small framed image, encased as it is in an incredibly ornate golden altar piece which fills the entire space between the clustered columns of the transept. There’s not much else to see in the church, although the paintings, including a dramatic Virgin with Saints by Luca Giordano, in the second chapel on the right, represent the Baroque at its most rampant.

Category: Rome

Santa Maria Sopra Minerva

Mon-Sat 7am-7pm, Sun 8am-7pm There’s more artistic splendour on view behind the Pantheon, though Bernini’s Elephant Statue doesn’t really prepare you for the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva beyond. The statue is Bernini’s most endearing piece of work, if not his most characteristic: a cheery elephant trumpeting under the weight of the grapheme he carries on his back – a reference to Pope Alexander VII’s reign and supposed to illustrate the fact that strength should support wisdom. Santa Maria sopra Minerva is Rome’s only Gothic church, and worth a look just for that, though its soaring lines have since been overburdened by marble and frescoes. Built in the late thirteenth century on the ruins of a temple to Minerva, it is also one of Rome’s art-treasure churches, crammed with the tombs and self-indulgences of wealthy Roman families. Of these, the Carafa chapel, in the south transept, is the best known, holding Filippino Lippi’s fresco of The Assumption, a bright, effervescent piece of work, below which one painting shows a hopeful Carafa (the religious zealot, Pope Paul IV) being presented to the Virgin Mary by Thomas Aquinas; another depicts Aquinas confounding the heretics in the sight of two beautiful young boys – the future Medici popes Leo X and Clement heptad (the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, destined for the Capitoline Hill, is just visible in the background). You should look too at the figure of Christ Bearing the Cross, on the left-hand side of the main altar, a serene work that Michelangelo completed for the church in 1521.

Category: Rome

San Paolo Fuori Le Mura

Daily 7:30am-6:30pm. Two kilometres or so south of the Porta San Paolo, the basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura is one of the five patriarchal basilicas of Rome, occupying the supposed site of St Paul’s tomb, where he was ordered to rest after being beheaded at Tre Fontane. Of the five, this basilica has probably fared the least well over the years. It was apparently once the grandest of them all, connected to the Aurelian Wall by a mile-long colonnade prefabricated up of 800 marble columns, but a ninth-century cloth by the Saracens and a devastating fire in 1823 (a couple of cack-handed roofers spilt burning tar, almost entirely destroying the church) means that the church you see now is largely a nineteenth-century reconstruction, sited in what is these days a rather unenticing neighbourhood.

For all that, it’s a very successful if somewhat clinical rehash of the former church, succeeding where St Peter’s tries (but finally fails) by impressing with sheer size and grandeur: whether you enter by way of the cloisters or the west door, it’s impossible not to be awed by the space of the building inside, its crowds of columns topped by round-arched arcading. Also, of all the basilicas of Rome, this one gives you the feel of what an ancient Roman basilica must have been like: the huge barn-like structure, its clerestory windows and roof beams supported by enormous columns, the only natural light provided by the alabaster window panes, all combine to lend a powerful and trusty sense of occasion.

Some parts of the building did survive the fire. In the south transept, the paschal candlestick is a remarkable piece of Romanesque carving, supported by half-human beasts and rising through entwined tendrils and strangely human limbs and bodies to scenes from Christ’s life, the figures crowding in together as if for a photocall; it’s inscribed by its makers, Nicolo di Angelo and Pietro Bassalletto. The bronze aisle doors were also rescued from the old basilica and date from 1070, as was the thirteenth-century tabernacle by Arnolfo di Cambio, under which a slab from the time of Constantine, inscribed “Paolo Apostolo Mort”, is supposed to lie – although it’s hard to get a look at this. The arch crossways the apse is original too, embellished with mosaics donated by the Byzantine queen Galla Placidia in the sixth century that show Christ giving a blessing, angels, the symbols of the Gospels, and Ss Peter and Paul. There’s also the cloister, just behind here – probably Rome’s finest piece of Cosmatesque work, its spiralling, mosaic-encrusted columns enclosing a peaceful rose garden. Just off here, the Relics Chapel houses a dustily kept set of semi-august relics, and the Pinacoteca shows engravings depicting San Paolo before and after the fire

Category: Rome

Sant ‘Andrea

A few steps south of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane on Via del Quirinale, which is flanked on the left by public gardens, there’s another piece of design ingenuity. The domed church of Sant ‘Andrea (daily except Tues 8am-noon & 4-7pm) is a flamboyant building that Bernini planned as a kind of flat oval shape to fit into its wide but shallow site.

Category: Rome

Accademia

Florence - FirenzeFlorence’s first Academy of Drawing – indeed, Europe’s first – was founded northeast of San Lorenzo on Via Ricasoli in the mid-sixteenth century by Bronzino, Ammannati and Vasari. In 1784, Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo opened the onsite Galleria dell’Accademia (Tues-Sun 8.30am-6.50pm, Sat until 10pm; L15,000/¬7.75; www.sbas.firenze.it ). The room has an impressive collection of paintings, especially of Florentine altarpieces from the fourteenth to the primeval sixteenth centuries – but the pictures are not what pull the crowds. Everyone comes here to see the most famous sculpture in the world, Michelangelo’s David . Seeing the David for the first time can be something of a shock. The conception of the piece was revolutionary. Instead of, as was common, portraying a static warrior David in full armour, with the head of Goliath lying trophy-like at his feet, Michelangelo chose to emphasize human thought and motivation. This David, as well as breaking with tradition by being completely nude (thus recalling classical statuary), is frozen in mid-movement. He is gazing intently over his left shoulder with a stone in his other hand, sizing up Goliath while shifting his weight onto his right foot prior to loading his sling and firing off the stone. The poise of the figure comes in its equilibrise between head and hands, between thought and action.

Michelangelo spent almost three years working beneath a temporary shelter set up in the courtyard of the Opera del Duomo, sculpting the David from a tall but very narrow block of flawed Carrara marble which had already been partly worked by others and abandoned. The completed statue is one of the few that Michelangelo created with a main frontal view, as opposed to being viewable in the round – largely because of the block’s limitations. He finished it, the largest nude to have been sculpted since classical times, in primeval 1504 at the age of 29. It was then carted on a four-day procession through the city to its display site in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, suffering attacks as it went from pro-Medici supporters who saw it as symbolizing the recent overthrow of Medicean and Savonarolan rule. Since then, the David has become an emblem of the city’s pride and of the illimitable ambition of the Renaissance artist. In 1873, it was moved to this specially designed tribune in the Accademia for conservation reasons, and was replaced outside the Palazzo Vecchio by a marble copy.

But herein lies the shock of a first viewing, which so upsets many in the scrum that gathers at David ’s feet. Michelangelo seems blithely to have forsaken all normal human proportion . David ’s head and hands are obviously far too big, his arms are too long, his legs are too short. Laser-wielding scientists even determined in 2000 that he is wall-eyed. For many people this undermines the whole work: the David is an incomparable show of technical bravura but how can it represent the saint of male beauty? And yet this piece of monumental public sculpture was not designed to be examined up close. On the plinth in Piazza della Signoria David ’s feet would have been way above head height. In the Accademia, you could reach out and touch his toes (but for a perspex shield installed after a tourist took a hammer to the sculpture’s left foot in 1991). Without the benefit of being healthy to view the work from a position well back as Michelangelo envisaged – which would give the illusion of lengthening the legs and shortening the trunk and arms – the David appears hopelessly gangling. Equally, scrutinizing a close-up, full-face image of David ’s frowning features is a modern preoccupation: from below, in profile and at a distance, the eyes that do in fact point in slightly different directions appear perfectly focused. In the words of Marc Levoy, the scientist from Stanford University who discovered the squint, “He optimized apiece eye for its appearance as seen from the side& It’s a typical Michelangelo trick.” Proportion, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.

Michelangelo once described the process of sculpting as being the liberation of the form from within the stone, a notion that seems to be embodied by the stunning unfinished Slaves that line the approach to the David . His procedure, clearly demonstrated here, was to cut the block as if it were a deep relief, and then to free the three-dimensional figure. Carved in the 1520s and 1530s, these immensely powerful creations, writhing as if to pull themselves free of the stone, were intended for the tomb of Pope Julius II; in 1564 the artist’s nephew gave them to the Medici, who installed them in the grotto of the Bóboli gardens. In their midst here is another unfinished work, St Matthew .

Category: Florence - Firenze