SACRED SPACES:BAROQUE ART and ARCHITECTURE

(St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome)

St. Peter’s Basilica

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http://www.saintpetersbasilica.org

St. Peter's Basilica – Wikipedia

Vatican Website

History of St. Peter's Basilica - History Channel

Lightning Strikes St. Peter's Basilica on the Day the Pope Resigns - Time News Feed

Bolt from the Blue: Lightning Strikes St. Peter's – YouTube

St. Peter's Basilica, Rome (HD) – YouTube

The Vatican Museums Part 1 – YouTube

Best of the Vatican Musuem - YouTube

ST. PETER’S BASILICA

Online Links:

Pope Julius II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

St. Peter's Basilica

Basilica

St. Peter's Basilica - Rome, Italy

Sacred Places: St. Peter's Basilica, Italy

Carlo Maderno. Façade of St. Peter’s Basilica (Rome)

Contrary to popular misconception, Saint Peter's is not a cathedral, as it is not the seat of a bishop. It is properly termed a papal basilica.

The cult of the martyrs became popular during the early Christian period and continued to increase in popularity throughout the Middle Ages. An important destination for pilgrims was the basilica of Old St. Peter’s in Rome. Built by the emperor Constantine, Old St. Peter’s was constructed at the site where the relics of the apostle Peter were believed to be entombed. Early Christian tradition describes Peter as having lived in Rome after the death of Christ, as having served the city as its bishop for twenty-five years, and as having been martyred between 64 and 67 C.E. during the reign of Nero.

Unlike Greek and Roman temples, whose main purpose was to house the statue of a god, Christian churches were designed so that crowds

of believers could gather together for worship. None of the early Christian basilicas has survived in its original form, but an accurate floor plan of Old Saint Peter’s exist. The architectural design of the Christian basilica conformed to the requirements of Christian ritual and to the role of the altar, where the Mass was performed, as its

focal point.

Guido Reni. The Crucifixion of St. Peter.

The five-aisled hall was a place of burial, and the “transept” was a place of pilgrimage: the faithful could approach and pay reverence to the memorial over the tomb of Peter. The place bore witness to the saint’s life and death and such sites came to be called martyria (from martyr, literally “a witness”).

According to legend, Peter was crucified in a head-downward position in the vicinity of the Vatican. Modern archaeological excavations, however, have not been able to confirm the location of Peter’s martyrdom and burial.

The Christian pilgrimage from the secular world to the church altar symbolized the soul’s progress from sin to salvation. The shrine was the focal point of St. Peter’s backed by the apse and, when seen from the entrance, framed by the arch- a very ancient architectural symbol of heaven and perhaps also recalling the triumphal arches of imperial Rome. A ciborium or canopy (also called a baldacchino), similar to those held over imperial thrones, was placed above it.

It was to St. Peter that Christ had said: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” He was the founder of the Christian community in Rome and its first bishop, from whom all subsequent bishops of Rome derived their authority- as popes- over not only the city but all Christendom.

St. Peter’s was also a cemetery church where Christians could bury their dead and celebrate their anniversaries. These were not necessarily the quiet, dignified ceremonies that one might imagine, for the commemorations involved banquets with plenty of eating and drinking. In the late fourth century, for example, we know that the senator Pammachius gave a feast to the poor in St. Peter’s on the anniversary of the death of his wife. Gradually, however, these activities waned and the church came to be regarded almost exclusively as a great shrine built in honor of the apostle.

According to tradition, Peter had a simple earthen grave. The site was the object of special care and veneration from the beginning; around the saint’s tomb an extensive Christian burial ground sprang up in the second and third

centuries. It seems that a small funerary monument, consisting of niches, small columns, a red retaining wall, and another wall covered with pious

graffiti, was built around Peter’s grave in the second century. Archaeologists could date the structure by seals on the bricks from the time of the Emperor

Marcus Aurelius (161-180). In the Scavi we can stand a few feet from that early monument.

Any visitor to the churches of Rome, and to St. Peter’s Basilica in particular, is advised to descend to the Scavi, or excavation site beneath the church, to judge first-hand the tradition of Peter’s burial here. Excavations carried out

beneath St. Peter’s Basilica between 1939 and 1951 uncovered first a pagan, then an increasingly Christian graveyard, and finally a semi-circle of graves surrounding a central cavity- directly below the present altar. The central

grave was empty, but covered with coins and other votives from the first and second centuries.

Raphael. Julius II, 1511-12, oil on panel

In 1505 Pope Julius II made a decision to demolish the ancient basilica and replace it with a monumental structure to house his enormous tomb and "aggrandize himself in the popular imagination.”

To design and build the new church, the pope appointed Donato Bramante, who envisioned the new St. Peter’s as a central-plan building, in the shape of a cross with four arms of equal length crowned by an enormous dome. This design was intended to emulate the Early Christian tradition of constructing domed and round buildings over the tombs of martyrs, itself derived from the Roman practice of building centrally planned tombs. In Renaissance thinking, the central plan and dome symbolized the perfection of God.

Earlier designs for the dome were created by the Renaissance artists Bramante and Michelangelo. Giacomo della Porta and his assistant, Domenico Fontana

brought the dome to completion in 1590. Bramante wanted the dome to crown a centrally planned church, but the final design is one of a basilica, not a

central, plan. The dome evokes the name of St. Peter, whose name in Greek means “rock”.

Michelangelo was well aware of the work done by his predecessors- from Bramante to Raphael to Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. The 71-year-old sculptor, confident of his architectural expertise, demanded the right to deal directly with the pope, rather than through a committee of construction deputies. Michelangelo further shocked the deputies- but not the pope- by undoing parts of Sangallo’s design, then simplifying and strengthening Bramante’s central plan, long associated with shrines of Christian martyrs. Although seventeenth-century additions and renovations dramatically changed the original plan of the church and the appearance of its interior, Michelangelo’s St. Peter’s still can be seen in the contrasting forms of the flat and angled exterior walls and the three surviving hemicycles (semicircular structures). Colossal pilasters, blind windows (frames without openings), and niches surround the sanctuary of the church. The current dome, erected by Giacomo della Porta in 1588-1590, retains Michelangelo’s basic design: segmented with regularly spaced ribs, seated on a high drum with pedimented windows between paired columns, and surmounted by a tall lantern.

During the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church emphasized congregational worship; as a result more space was needed to house the congregation and allow for processions. To expand the church- and to make it most closely resemble Old St. Peter’s – Pope Paul V in 1606 commissioned the architect Carlo Maderno to change Michelangelo’s central plan back once again into a longitudinal plan. Maderno extended the nave to its final length of slightly more than 636 feet and added a new façade, thus completing St. Peter’s as we see it is today.

Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world.

In Roman Catholic tradition, the basilica is the burial site of its namesake St. Peter, who was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus and, according to tradition, the first Bishop of Rome and therefore first in the line of the papal succession. Tradition and some historical evidence hold that Saint Peter’s tomb is directly below the altar of the basilica, marked by a canopy called a baldacchino.

The twisted columns symbolize the union of Old and New Testaments- the vine of the Eucharist climbing the columns of the Temple of Solomon. The fanciful Composite capitals, combining elements of both the Ionic and the Corinthian orders, support an entablature with a crowning element topped with an orb (a sphere representing the universe) and a cross (symbolizing the reign of Christ). Figures of angels and putti decorate the entablature, which is hung with tasseled panels in imitation of a cloth canopy. These symbolic elements, both architectural and sculptural, not only mark the site of the tomb of Saint Peter but also serve as a monument to Urban VIII and his family, the Barberini, whose emblems – including honey-bees and suns on the tasseled panels, and laurel leaves on the climbing vines – are prominently displayed.

Bernini received his first papal commission when only 26 years old. The elements of the design were traditional but combined in a new way, which offended some contemporaries. Its twisted columns are greatly enlarged versions of those believed to have come from Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem (incorporated in Constantine’s basilica and later re-used by Bernini); the tasseled valance simulates the fabric of a canopy carried on staves, usually for a priest bearing the sacrament in a procession, and the superstructure recalls a type of ciborium often suspended over an altar. Symbolically, therefore, its message was plain to all believers and the triumphant visual flourish of its large, twisting columns, buoyant scrolls and dynamic sculpture epitomizes the grandeur, flamboyance and emotionalism of the Counter-Reformation.

The present arrangement of the piazza in front of St. Peter’s, constructed between 1656 and 1667, is the Baroque inspiration of Gianlorenzo Bernini

who inherited a location already occupied by an Egyptian obelisk of the 13th century BCE, which was centrally placed, (with some contrivance) to

Maderno's facade. The obelisk, known as "The Witness", is the second largest standing obelisk, and the only one to remain standing since its removal from Egypt and re-erection at the Circus of Nero in 37 CE, where it is thought to

have stood witness to the crucifixion of St Peter.

The part of the colonnade that is around the ellipse does not entirely encircle it, but reaches out in two arcs, symbolic of the arms of "the Roman Catholic Church reaching out to welcome

its communicants.”

The city of Rome carries the stamp of Bernini’s flamboyant style. Commissioned to complete the piazza, the broad public space in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, Bernini designed a trapezoidal space that opens out to a larger oval- the two shapes from perhaps symbolically, a keyhole. Bernini’s courtyard is bounded by a spectacular colonnade that incorporates 284 Doric columns (each 39 feet high) as well as 96 statues of saints (each 15 feet tall). In a manner consistent with the ecumenical breadth of Jesuit evangelism, the gigantic pincerlike arms of the colonnade reach out to embrace an area that can accommodate over 250,000 people- a vast proscenium on which devotional activities of the Church of Rome are staged to this day.

The Saint Peter’s of Bernini’s time was the locus of papal authority; then, as now, popes used the central balcony of the basilica to impart the traditional blessing: ‘Urbi et Orbi’ (“To the city and to the world”).

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