Entries with Renaissance tag

Vatican Museums

Viale Vaticano 13. Dec-March Mon-Sat 8.45am-12.45pm, last exit 1.45pm; rest of year Mon-Sat 8.45am-3.45pm, last exit 4.45pm; L18,000, reduced rate L12,000. Closed Sun, hols and religious holidays, except the last Sunday of apiece month when admission is free. A fifteen-minute achievement out of the northern side of the Piazza San Pietro takes you up to the only part of the Vatican Palace you can visit independently, the VATICAN MUSEUMS – quite simply, the largest, richest, most compelling and perhaps most exhausting museum complex in the world. If you have found any of Rome’s other museums disappointing, the Vatican is probably the reason why: so much booty from the city’s history has ended up here, from both classical and later times, and so many of the Renaissance’s finest artists were in the employ of the pope, that not surprisingly the result is a set of museums so stuffed with antiquities as to place most other European collections to shame.

As its study suggests, the Vatican Palace actually holds a collection of museums on very diverse subjects – displays of classical statuary, Renaissance painting, Etruscan relics, Egyptian artefacts, not to mention the furnishings and decoration of the palace itself. There’s no point in trying to see everything, at least not on one visit. Once inside, you have a choice of routes , but the only features you really shouldn’t miss are the Raphael Stanze and the Sistine Chapel. Above all, decide how long you want to spend here, and what you want to see, before you start; you could spend anything from 45 minutes to the better part of a day here, and it’s cushy to collapse from museum fatigue before you’ve even got to your most important target of interest. Be conservative – the distances between different sections alone can be vast and very tiring.

Category: Vatican Museums

Sant’agostino

Daily 7.45am-noon & 4-7.30pm. To the northeast of Piazza Navona, crossways Piazza delle Cinque Lune and through an arch, is the Renaissance deception of the church of Sant’Agostino , which takes up one side of a drab piazza of the same name. It’s not much to look at from the outside, but a handful of art treasures might draw you in. Just inside the door, the serene statue of the Madonna del Parto, by Sansovino, is traditionally invoked during pregnancy, and is accordingly surrounded by photos of newborn babes and their blissful parents. Further into the church, take a look also at Raphael’s vibrant fresco of Isaiah, on the third pillar on the left, beneath which is another work by Sansovino, a craggy St Anne, Virgin and Child. But the biggest crowds gather around the first chapel on the left, where the Madonna and Pilgrims by Caravaggio (L500 to switch on the lights) is a characteristic work of what was at the time almost revolutionary realism, showing two peasants with dirty limbs and clothes praying at the feet of a sensuous Mary and Child.

Category: Rome

San Marco

Daily except Mon morning and Wed afternoon 8.30am-12.30pm & 4-7pm. Adjacent to the Palazzo Venezia on its southern side, the church of San Marco , accessible from Piazza San Marco, is a tidy basilica rebuilt in 833 and added to by various Renaissance and eighteenth-century popes. Currently under restoration, it’s a warm, cosy church, restored by Paul II – who added the graceful portico and gilded ceiling – with an apse mosaic dating from the ninth century showing Pope Gregory offering his church to Christ.

Category: Rome, Venice

Palazzo Venezia

Via del Plebiscito 118. Tues-Sat 9am-1.30pm, Sun 9am-1pm; L8000. Forming the western side of the piazza, Palazzo Venezia was the first large Renaissance palace in the city, built for the Venetian Pope Paul II in the mid-fifteenth century and for a long time the embassy of the Venetian Republic. More famously, Mussolini moved in here while in power, occupying the vast Sala del Mappamondo and making his declamatory speeches to the huge crowds below from the small balcony covering on to the piazza proper. In those days the palace lights would be left on to give the impression of constant activity in what was the centre of the Fascist government and war effort; now it’s a much more peripheral building, a venue for great temporary exhibitions and home to a museum of Renaissance arts and crafts prefabricated up of the magpie-ish collection of Paul II (times and prices above).

Category: Rome, Venice

Villa Farnesina

Mon-Sat 9am-1pm; L6000. Across the road from the Palazzo Corsini is the much more interesting Villa Farnesina, built during the primeval sixteenth century by Baldassare Peruzzi for the Renaissance banker Agostino Chigi and known for its Renaissance frescoes. Inside you can view the Raphael-designed painting of Cupid and Psyche in the now glassed-in loggia, completed in 1517 by the artist’s assistants, Giulio Romano, Francesco Penni and Giovanni da Udine. Vasari claims Raphael didn’t complete the work because his infatuation with his mistress – “La Fornarina”, whose father’s bakery was situated nearby – was making it difficult to concentrate, and says that Chigi arranged for her to live with the painter in the palace while he worked on the loggia. More likely he was simply so overloaded with commissions that he couldn’t possibly finish them all. He did, however, manage to finish the Galatea in the room next door, which he fitted in between his Vatican commissions for Julius II; “the greatest evocation of paganism of the Renaissance”, Kenneth Clark called it, although Vasari claims that Michelangelo, passing by one day while Raphael was canoodling with La Fornarina, finished the painting for him. In the same room, the lunettes feature scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses by Sebastiano del Piombo, while the ceiling illustrates Chigi’s horoscope constellations, frescoed by the architect of the building, Peruzzi, who also decorated the upstairs Salone delle Prospettive, where trompe l’oeil balconies give views onto contemporary Rome – one of the early examples of the technique.

Category: Rome

Janiculum Hill

From the Villa Farnesina, it’s about a fifteen-minute achievement up Via Garibaldi (bus #870 goes up from Piazza della Rovere) to the summit of the Janiculum Hill – not one of the original seven hills of Rome, but the one with the best and most accessible views of the centre. Via Garibaldi leads up past the church of San Pietro in Montorio (daily 7.30am-noon & 4-6pm), built on a site once – now, it’s thought, wrongly – believed to have been the place of the saint’s crucifixion. The compact interior is particularly intimate – it’s a favourite for weddings – and features some first-rate paintings, among them Sebastiano del Piombo’s graceful Flagellation. Don’t miss Bramante’s little Tempietto (daily 9am-noon & 4-6pm) in the courtyard on the right, one of the seminal works of the Renaissance, built on what was supposed to have been the precise spot of St Peter’s martyrdom. The small circular building is like a classical temple in miniature, perfectly proportioned and neatly executed. The Janiculum was the scene of a fierce 1849 set-to between Garibaldi’s troops and the French, and the white marble memorial opposite the church is dedicated to all those who died in the battle. A little further up the hill, the Acqua Paola – constructed for Paul V with marble from the Roman Forum – gushes water at a bend in the road. At the top, the Porta San Pancrazio was built during the reign of Urban VIII, destroyed by the French in 1849, and rebuilt by Pope Pius IX five years later. It has recently been restored to house the new Museum of the Roman Republic 1848-49 – yet to open at time of writing. Afterwards, take the weight off your feet at Bar Gianicolo , a cool hangout for Italian media stars, writers and academics from the nearby Spanish and American academies.

Just beyond here is the entrance to the grounds of the Villa Doria Pamphili , which stretch down the hill alongside the old Via Aurelia. This is the largest and most recent of Rome’s parks, ordered out in 1650 and acquired for the city in the Seventies. It’s a good place for a picnic, but most people turn right along the Passeggiata del Gianicolo to the crest of the hill, where, on Piazzale Garibaldi, there’s an equestrian monument to Garibaldi – an ostentatious work from 1895. Just below is the spot from which a cannon is fired at noon apiece day for Romans to check their watches. Further on, the statue of Anita Garibaldi recalls the important part she played in the 1849 effort – a fiery, melodramatic work (she cradles a baby in one arm, brandishes a pistol with the other, and is galloping full speed on a horse) which also marks her grave. Spread out before her are some of the best views over the city.

A little further on is the Renaissance Villa Lante , a jewel of a place that is now the home of the Finnish Academy in Rome. Descending from here towards the Vatican and Saint Peter’s, follow some steps off to the right and, next to a small amphitheatre, you’ll find the gnarled old oak tree where the sixteenth-century Italian poet Tasso , friend of Cellini and author of Orlando Furioso, is said to have whiled away his last days. Further down the hill, past the Jesuit children’s hospital, the church of Sant’Onofrio (Sun 9am-1pm) sits on the road’s hairpin, its L-shaped portico fronting the church where Tasso is buried. To the right of the church is one of the city’s most delightful small cloisters; you can visit the poet’s cell, which holds some manuscripts, his chair, his death mask and individualized effects.

Category: Rome

Galleria Di Arte Antica

Via Barberini 18. April-Oct Tues-Fri 9am-9pm, Sat 9am-noon, Sun 9am-8pm; Nov-March Tues-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat & Sun 9am-1pm; L12,000. The Palazzo Barberini is home to the Galleria di Arte Antica , consisting of a rich patchwork of mainly Italian art from the primeval Renaissance to late Baroque period in the palace’s converted rooms, now open again after a massive restoration. At time of writing the restoration was still in progress, and it’s hard to say precisely where things will be by the time you read this. But broadly the collection proceeds chronologically crossways three floors of the building, starting with the first floor and ending on the third.

It’s an impressive collection, and highlights include works by Titian, El Greco and Caravaggio. But perhaps the most impressive feature of the room is the building itself, worked on at different times by the most favoured architects of the day – Bernini, Borromini, Maderno – and the epitome of Baroque grandeur. The first floor salone is guaranteed to impress, its ceiling frescoed by Pietro da Cortona in one of the best examples of exuberant Baroque trompe l’oeil work there is, a manic rendering of The Triumph of Divine Providence that almost crawls down the walls to meet you.

Across the hall from the salone, the first floor displays primeval Renaissance works, notably Fra’ Filippo Lippi’s warmly maternal Madonna and Child, painted in 1437 and introducing background details, notably architecture, into Italian religious painting for the first time. Next to it is a richly coloured and beautifully composed Annunciation by the same artist. A further room hosts Raphael’s beguiling Fornarina, a painting of the daughter of a Travesteran baker thought to have been Raphael’s mistress (Raphael’s study appears clearly on the woman’s bracelet), although some experts claim the painting to be the work of a pupil. Look out also for Bronzino’s portrait of Stefano Colonna, several works by Sodoma, including a dark Mystical Marriage of St Catherine, and an anguished St Jerome by Tintoretto – full of interesting detail, and clever use of light and shade.

Among the upstairs works, there is a famous painting of Beatrice Cenci, fomerly attributed to Guide Reni, which moved Shelley to write a play about her tragedy, and a portrait of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein which feels almost as well known – probably because the painter produced so many of the monarch. Painted on the day of his marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, he’s depicted as a rather irritable but beautifully dressed middle-aged man – a stark contrast to the rather ascetic figure of Erasmus of Rotterdam by Quentin Matsys, which hangs next to it.

Category: Rome