Origins of the Roman Renaisance

The city of Rome can seem almost surreal at times, given the collision of ancient ruins and modern architecture that defines the city's landscape. Due to its status as the center of the Roman Empire, the city of Rome has a wealth of ancient ruins and remnants unparalleled by any other site. Although today we often think of these structures as rediscovered artifacts of the ancient world, much of the classical ruins were known to the people of

The modern-day interior of the Pantheon, now Santa Maria ad Martyres

Rome, influencing the city's scholars and artists, resulting in the introduction of subtle but definitive classical elements some time before the Renaissance. At least one of Rome's ancient structure has remained in use almost constantly since its construction; the magnificent Pantheon. Once a temple to “all the gods” of Rome, the Pantheon was made a Christian church in the seventh century and it continues to serve this purpose today. The building’s classical architecture has been remarkably well preserved, and would have been well known to the artists and architects of Medieval Rome. The perfect sphere of the surmounted by the oculus – a round, open window that was once the only source of light in the temple – creates an atmosphere that must have been even more astonishing to Medieval Christians than it is to us today. Exposure to such remnants of classical antiquity noticeably influenced Christian art in Rome even before the start of the Renaissance.

Roman art of the so-called Middle Ages, despite naturally certain classicizing elements, was far from classical. The apse of Santa Maria in Trastevere contains a Byzantine-style mosaic depicting the Coronation of the Virgin, a motif taken from Christian extra-biblical tradition. While the enthroned figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary are depicted with some slight indication of human form beneath their drapery, the forms of the figures flanking Jesus and his mother – portraits of saints, holy men, and the

Mosaic of the Coronation of the Virgin in the apse of Santa Maria in Trastevere

 church’s patron – are completely enveloped by their garments and stand rigid and columnar. There is little depth to the imagery, which instead possesses a graphic quality best seen in the way in which the artist has rendered the drapery; sharp,superficial lines that represent rather than depict the folds of a loose fabric. Although our modern tastes might think this style lacking and unrealistic, it was indeed preferred at the time, and the skill and care with witch the artist rendered the figures and the scene's shimmering golden backdrop still continues to amaze viewers.

The transition from the rigidity of Byzantine art is perfectly captured in the remnants of a stunning fresco by Pietro Cavallini depicting The Last Judgment. The fresco, which covered the wall above the entrance to Santa Cecilia where the church’s choir is now, depicts Jesus enthroned in a mandorla, flanked on either side by angels, the Twelve Apostles, and the Virgin Mary. Beneath them are depicted the dead, separated into the those destined for heaven on the Jesus’ right and those subject to damnation on his left. Although the fresco draws heavily on Byzantine style, the way in which Cavallini uses light and shadow to define the forms of his figures and their drapery, the latter of which is particularly classicizing in its elegant, natural folds. The figures depicted also break from the Byzantine tradition as Cavallini has painted them clearly in motion, though still more subdued than in the coming eras.
 

Details of Pietro Cavallini's Last Judgment in the choir of Santa Cecilia

Fragment of a Maestà fresco, now in Il Gesù

This style, known as Roman realism, reflects the gradual movement back towards naturalism that would become popular with the Late Medieval artists who set the stage for the Renaissance. The greatest of these artists was said to be Giotto, who broke almost completely from Byzantine tradition and used shadow and foreshortening to imbue his paintings with a sense of three-dimensionality. A fresco done in the style of Giotto, but not painted by the artist himself, once adorned the walls of Santa Maria della Strada where Saint Ignatius of Loyola lived for a time before his death. The fresco depicted the Maestà, a motif featuring the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child, and was a favorite of Ignatius, who asked that it be placed in Il Gesù when it was built. Indeed, a fragment of the fresco depicting the Madonna and Christ Child is enshrined in the church today. The modeling of the figures’ faces and their drapery is exemplary of the growing interest in naturalism that would define the Renaissance and which was already taking root in Rome by virtue of the remnants of classical antiquity that pervade the city.