Orgins of the Roman Renassiance Week 1

Alexandria Johnson

 On the first class that we have had here in Rome we learn about the basis for art in Rome during the renaissance period. One of the first things we touched was how the time period the renaissance was coined. A man named Reptra came up with the three terms which are the golden ancient times, the Middle Ages or dark ages, and the back to the classics phase. The ancient period was the time of classical art where everything was very soft and detailed the middle ages was a time when everyone wanted to veer away from the classical and move more too their own still with flat lines, and the final stage is when people really want to have their art be like the classics but more detailed.
After we learned about the different time periods and how they are we made our first stop which was the church of Santa Maria in Terstevera. This church was considered to be the first public Christian church; in 340 Julius IV built the church on an oratory where an eruption of oil happened. The church consist of many different art styles from different time periods the inside of the church is more 12th century. When we entered the church we saw a lot of different beautiful art work that had a lot of different iconography. We had a presentation iconography so that we know what it means. Iconography means the study of subject matter of the art piece which basically means what is the story is of the art. It’s not about the technical details it’s the expression of stories through art. In the arc of the church there was a beautiful mosaic that was made during the byzantine era. At the top of the mosaic was an image of Christ and his “court”. Christ was in the middle with Mary on his right and Peter on his left. Right under that was a series of image of the Virgin Mary from her birth to her death and assumption to heaven. This was place here because the church is dedicated to Mary so it was only right to have art dedicated to her.
The next stop we made was the church of St. Cecilia which was made in dedication to the Saint Celica who was martyred because she help evangelize Christianity as a virgin for Christ. We enter the church where we went upstairs to see a fresco which was made to show the last judgment. While there we talked about what a fresco was, a fresco is a wall painting which is made with plaster and paint. The fresco in this church had Jesus in a thrown and he is passing judgment from above to the people bellow which had the good people on the left and the bad people on the right. It was put at the exit to the church to remind people of that time that is supposed to be coming so that they can want to be the good people.
The next stop we made was to the Tempiato which means little temple. This was a small temple that was built over the stop that was believe to be where Saint Peter was martyred. It was alter discovered he was actually killed somewhere else that is closer to the Saint Peters basilica. But this is a circle temple with columns it is circular because circles represented martyrdom and it also had ideal geometry; which means it was very accurate to the details of the building.
One of our last stops was at a church commission by Carata whom was an enemy of the Jesuits who later became a pope. There we saw fresco done by Filippo who was a Florentine artist in the 15th century. He created a piece that consisted of many different elements such as the cebilbles who were female prophets, which showed Jesus was the savior if all people.
The first day of class I learned a lot about the origins of the roman renaissance and about the basic terms of the course I can’t wait until next week to learn even more!




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