June 15

Typically, when most people think of the Renaissance, they think of people like Leonardo da Vince, and Michelangelo and famous sculptors and architects and artists like that (the Ninja Turtles famous people). While that is technically true that they are Renaissance artisans, it would be a little more accurate to say they are High Renaissance artisans. Now what this has to do with the Jesuit side of the course is a pretty simple degree of separation – this all was happening around the time Ignatius of Loyola was alive! In other words, he was seeing everything going on in this golden age in time and was surviving in the hectic period of growth and prosperity.

First up was St. Peter’s and first up on that was… Doors. Yep. Doors. But they’re a pretty good example of the artistic style of this age. Granted, these just weren’t any plain doors, but doors designed and made by Filarete in 1445 as a donor portrait for Pope Eugene IV. Filarete was a Florentine, which while it may not seem like very useful information, it is due to the fact that his Florentine background highly influenced his work. His name has an interesting meaning too; the “arete” part comes from the Greek term to describe excellence, so people snapped this into his pseudonym because they knew how excellent he was at his craft.

As for the doors themselves, I’ll try to keep this short but they are chock full of information. The doors depict two main figures: St. Peter and St. Paul. In peter’s hands are his symbol, the papal keys, while in Paul’s hand is his own symbol the sword used to show how he was beheaded (due to being a Roman citizen). A section of Paul’s martyrdom scene also depicts how there was another woman that gave him a cloth before he was beheaded, but he gave it back to her since she was to be beheaded first. Peter’s martyrdom is how he was crucified upside down on the cross.  Next to the figure of Peter is Pope Eugene IV kneeling beside him. Filarete also hid himself and his works on the door as sort of a “signature” to show that they did it.

 








Afterwards, we went into the basilica itself and noticed that it was pretty much the same as every basilica we’ve come across… Only larger. We’ve basically gotten the shape memorized by now, with its cross general shape and a large apse at the end… Only we could really get to the apse because of a mass going on. Who knew Corpus Christi had a different date for the Vatican? Either way, we still managed to get some pictures, such as of Michelangelo’s Pieta. This statue is of Mary holding a dying Jesus across her lap and has a very angelic scene to it… Until you notice her hips are just a tiny bit too wide and seem just a little off. Granted, it can be pretty hard to get the proportions right sometimes.





Next was the Palazzo Farnese (did we see the President of Italy?) and the frescoes on the walls. The primary ones that you see when walking in are the Triumph of Galatea and the cyclops Polyphemus watching her longingly as she rides along in her dolphin chariot. This was painted by Raphael in about 1514, but it looks like it was a little inspired by Michelangelo. (I also happened to get multiple pictures of everything Apollo because I find his stories so interesting.)






So while I would just love to ramble on a little more, I think this is starting to get long enough and I don’t really want to bore the world with every last thing I ended up doing on this trip. I’ve got two presentations to do this coming week and one of them I might just be a little of an overachiever on. So! I hope to enjoy the coming days of the trip and then proceed to have some terrible Dominoes the moment I get home


-Savannah Kelly

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