Origins of the Roman Renaissance





Thursday was filled with quite a bit of vocabulary and history, but beyond that it was stuffed to the brim with brilliant art. The first stop we made on Thursday was in Trastevere to a beautiful church called Santa Maria with an even more beautiful mosaic. The mosaic itself depicted Jesus Christ reigning over the kingdom of heaven with his mother Mary to his right side. This mosaic shows us a very flat, two-dimensional image, but that does not diminish the quality of the art being presented. The message the piece is trying to present is very clear. It is Christ, Mary, St. Peter, and several other important individuals to the development of the basilica all in heaven gazing down on the audience. Having a clear message at the time this basilica was put up was significant, as many people were illiterate. The mosaic itself has a brilliantly bold golden background with elements we have seen in other early Roman churches such as the hand of God above Christ as well as the lamb of God being prominent. Traditionally, mosaics are built up of small pieces of stone or glass called tesserae which are of various shapes and colors and come together to make up a larger image. Though mosaics have three-dimensional elements, they are ultimately considered paintings as opposed to sculptures.
Just below the main art in the apse of Santa Maria was a set of mosaics done by artist Pietro Cavallini. Cavallini lived in the late Middle Ages, but his work still had a sense of depth to it that was ahead of its time. Instead of having figures standing side by side at a very static position, blankly staring at the audience, Cavallini was able to capture movement in his mosaics and make the subjects of his art seem more like people. In this way, his mosaics were less like the static message of the apse mosaic and were able to tell more of a narrative. In Santa Maria's Cavallini mosaics, we saw the story of the Virgin Mary from birth to annunciation. One of the more interesting aspects of how the story is told is how the birth of Christ is depicted as being in a cave as opposed to a manger, however the part that I found most interesting was the Assumption of Mary into heaven. It was incredible how much Cavallini was able to pack into the single frame in terms of layering, clearly all of the apostles had to be present for this important event and despite how the single frame was not very large, Cavallini was able to fit all twelve of the apostles in, plus Mary, plus Jesus holding Mary's soul, plus onlookers. It was truly a feat of artistic work, especially for the Middle Ages.
Later that day we visited San Pietro in Montorio, which was where St. Peter was originally thought to have been crucified. For a place where such a massive event had supposedly occurred, the Church itself was quite small and the temple which was built above the site was even smaller which actually made the site feel more like a place where pilgrims would actually go to see where St. Peter was crucified. The best part of the site, however, was the perfectly proportioned temple known simply as Tempietto which was designed by Donato Bramante and is considered no less than a masterpiece. The building is not only visually stunning, but perfectly proportioned inside and out. It stands directly above the covered hole where for a long period of time people believed St. Peter was crucified upside down.
Our second to last stop was a gorgeous basilica called Santa Maria sopra Minerva. While the church in and of itself was astounding and held the tombs of many important individuals as well as a statue of Jesus Christ done by the great Michelangelo, the part that interested me the most was the grave of Fra Angelico. While not the most well-known painter of his time, his work for the church was undeniably important as he painted many frescos as well as other pieces during his time as a friar. What struck me the most about Fra Angelico was his humility. He only has one signed work, The Crucifixion, all else has only been credited to him because of his unique and angelic style of painting, which is what earned him the nickname "Angelico".







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