The Building of the Vatican: The Papacy and Architecture Author(s): Suzanne Boorsch Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 40, No. 3, The Building of the Vatican: The Papacy and Architecture (Winter, 1982-1983), pp. 1-2+4-64 Published by: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3258914 Accessed: 17/01/2010 18:25Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mma. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

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SAINT PETER'SMore than a thousand years before these architects lived, however, and long before any of the structures now extant were erected, a basilica was constructed in the Vaticanareaby Constantine (280-337), the first emperor to embrace Christianity.The original Saint Peter's Basilica was built over the place that since at least the second century was veneratedas the tomb of Saint Peter, the first apostle of Christ and thus considered the first pope. Saint Peter, who was martyred in the seventh decade of the Christian era-in the Circus of Nero, according to tradition-had been buried near the circus in a simple grave at the foot of the Vatican hill, across the Tiber from the main part of Rome. Over the years a large necropolis grew up in the area. A small structure was built during the second century to mark the tomb of Peter. After the emperor Constantine defeated Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge, a victory he attributedto the help of the Christian God, he put the power and wealth of the Roman Empire at the service of Christianity. First he built a basilica in the Laterandistrict; now called San Giovanni in Laterano, it has been the cathedralchurch of Rome ever since. He then turned his attention to the site of Saint Peter's tomb, and in about the year 320 he began construction of a huge basilicathere. The engraving at the left from a seventeenth-century book shows, superimposed, the plans of the Circus of Nero, the Constantinian basilica, and the present Saint Peter's as it had been built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. North is to the right: Saint Peter's had, and still has, its entrance at the eastern end and its altar at the western, as opposed to the orientation of most Christian churches. Seventeenth-century scholars thought that what were actually the southern foundations of the Constantinianbasilicahad been the northern walls of the circus. This belief has since been proved wrong, but that there was a circus in the area is certain. To build the basilicanecessitatedleveling a vast site on the slope of the Vatican hill, which rose from south to north. The foundations, and perhaps more of the structure, were apparently completed about 333 and most of the building finished before Constantine's death in 337. Over 350 feet long and with a gabled roof over 100 feet high at the center, the basilica had a central nave and two aisles on each side, divided by rows of columns (twenty-two in a row, not twentythree as shown on the plan), all of which were spoils from earlier buildings. The structure, whose transept extended beyond the width of the rest of the

the aintPeter'sandthe Vatican, grand,imposing,

unified complex that is one of the prime symbols of the Roman Catholic faith, was built over a period of centuries by perhaps as many as two dozen architects. The most important era for building was the two-hundred-year span from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century:of what is now standing in the Vatican,little was built before the time of Nicholas V (1447-55) and most was completed before the death of Alexander VII (1655-67). The most significant contributionswere made by four architects-Bramante, Michelangelo, Maderno, and Bernini; without the work of any one of them, the Vatican today would have a substantially different appearance.

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the north, copied after one of the sketches of the 1530s Maarten van Heemskerck. Abutting the wall of the /by ",' '"Vatican precinct on both sides, on high foundations and ...... with projecting towers and crenelations, it looks like a fortified castle. But the two stories of arcaded loggias attest to its function as a villa, and the cypress garden to the west was meant for pleasurablestrolling. It was Julius II (1503-13) and his architectBramante who devised a grand plan for making the Belvedere an integral part of the palace complex. Ratherthan consid_ering one building at a time, Julius and Bramante thought in terms of overall organization of open spaces and the relationships among structures. Their plan for 4 ts W_YtheBelvedere was inspired by classical antiquity-as were all Julius's plans-in both outlook and scale; it may well have derived from some of the ideas of Nicholas V (1447-55) for rebuilding Rome. The Belvedere project called for the creation of a huge open-air ensemble of theater and gardens, all embellished with fountains, on the hillside between the palace and the new villa built by Innocent VIII. The hill was to be terracedand the space enclosed between two parallel corridors, which would provide covered, pro-

tected passage between the palace and the villa. Early in Julius's pontificate the Belvedere became the site of the famous statue court, and there was a need for easy and dignified access to this area. As with construction of Saint Peter's, work proceeded quickly while Julius II and Bramante were alive, but after their deaths the pace dropped dramatically.The view from the west by Hendrick van Cleve (opposite), although not entirely accurate, suggests the state of the courtyard in 1550. Much of what it shows had been built before Bramante died in 1514. The palace is at the far right-the eastern corridors, of which two stories were finished by Bramante-have reached their full height, and the upper level is shown with a fountain in place. At the left, behind a roofed apartment block and Bramante's semicircular exedra, van Cleve shows, although incorrectly in some details, the Belvedere statue

court. This open-air museum, made in imitation of the or antique viridarium, garden, sheltered the antique statues that became the foundation of the Vatican collections. To create the court, a new faqade was placed in front of the old building on the eastern wall (the far side in this view). The court was roughly square-a loggia, whose back wall closed the court and which van Cleve did not show, actually went from the exedra at the right to the facade of the villa at the left. Niches, probably decoratedto look as though planted with greenery,were made in the corners and along the walls. It is uncertain just when the statueswere first placed in the court, but by 1510 the Apollo Belvedere view (on in the exhibition The Vatican the Collections), Laocoon (see opposite, bottom), the VenusFelix, and other statuary were set up. By 1512 the so-called Cleopatra (really Ariadne)and the river god Tiberhad been added, and in 1513 the Nile. These two river gods, nude reclining

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