esteemed work of S. Rinaldo Rinaldi. Santa Maria in via lata, gilded and modernised, is said to occupy the spot where Saint Paul and Saint Peter lived. The spring in the subterranean church served to baptise those whom the rude eloquence of the latter apostle converted. The portal, by Pietro da Cortona, was reckoned by him as his masterpiece of architecture. The antique church of Saint Mark, several times renovated, has some good works: the Battles, by P. Cosimo, a Jesuit; the Christ risen, by the younger Palma; the Adoration of the Magi, by Carlo Maratta; St. Mark the pope and St. Mark the evangelist, by Perugino; the latter saint, and some lateral chapels, by Bourguignon; and the tomb of Leonardo Pesaro, a Venetian, by Ca nova. The church of the Gesù, the professed house of the Jesuits, is of the architecture of Vignola and his pupil Jacopo della Porta, who has not in every instance very scrupulously followed his master's design, especially in the construction of the portal in travertine and too ornate decoration of the roof, which is not in keeping with its simple, pure, and elegant disposition. There is nearly always a strong breeze near the Ġesù, owing to the elevation of Mount Capitoline and the direction of the streets. The Roman populace say that the Devil was one day walking with the Wind, and when he reached this church he said to his companion: "I have something to do in here; wait for me a moment.' The Devil never came out, and the Wind is still waiting for him at the door. This splendid church presents good works and a great number of very bad ones. The St. Francis Xavier, by Carlo Maratta, in the false and easy style of Sacchi, and the Circumcision, pleasing, by Muziano, have been praised. The frescos of the roof of the gallery and of the great cupola pass for the best of Baciccio, a painter of the Roman school, the friend of Bernini, who aided him with his advice. The sumptuous chapel of Saint Ignatius, from the design of P. Pozzi, seems singularly formal: the globe of lapis lazuli, held by the Eternal Father, is the largest in existence. Two of our compatriots, Théodon and Legros, seem there to dispute the mastery in refinement and exaggeration: the first in his group of the Japanese embracing Christianity; the second, in that of Faith overthrowing Heresy, which, notwithstanding the defects of the period. has some well executed parts. Under the altar, the richest altar in the world, the tomb of the saint, of gilt bronze, contrasts with his life spent in poverty, toil, and sufferings; he reposes on a shroud adorned with precious stones, and his tall statue is of massive silver, partly gilded, and further ornamented with gems. The two little angels over a side door of this chapel are probably the least ridiculous sculptures of Rusconi, and of the eighteenth century. The Gesù holds the tomb of Cardinal Bellarmin, the illustrious controversialist, who blended the principles of the sovereignty of the people and the pope, revived in our days: his invectives against the temporal powers, and perhaps the naive vanity displayed in the Memoirs of his life, have prevented his canonisation. The design is by Rainaldi; the two figures of Religion and Wisdom are by Bernini. CHAPTER XVI. Aracoeli. Pietro della Valle.-Column of the apartment of the Emperors.-Mausoleum of the Savelli. -Epitaph of De' Fredis.-Tomb of Fra Matteo.Santissimo Bambino.—Mamertine prison.-Saint Luke.-Academy of Saint Luke.-Virgin.- False scull of Raphael.—Alvarez. The church of Aracoeli probably occupies the site of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; but its twenty-two columns of Egyptian granite cannot have formed part of it, as, according to Plutarch, the columns of that temple were Pentelic marble; differing in size and workmanship, they have been taken where they could be found: the third, on entering, has this inscription in ill-shaped antique letters: A cubiculo Augustorum (from the bed-chamber of the Cæsars on Mount Palatine). What a strange destiny for this column, to have passed from the apartment of the emperors into a church of Franciscans! The frescos of the Life of St. Bernardin, the best being the Death of the Saint, are good works by Pinturicchio; having been restored by S. Camuccini, they present true attitudes, a simple and well-conceived expression, though somewhat stiff and dry in the drawing and execution. The famous Roman traveller and pilgrim, Pietro della Valle, cited also as an elegant writer, is interred near his beloved wife, Sitti Maani Giærida, young Assyrian Christian, whom he married at Bagdad; the companion of his travels and his combats in Persia against the Turks, she died near the gulf of Ormuz, and in this sar..e church of Aracoeli he celebrated her funeral with great pomp and delivered a funeral oration. This sensible traveller, an acute observer, according to Gibbon, who had little reason to censure bis vanity and prolixity, found the system of mutual instruction practiced by the Hindoos at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The celebrated mausoleum of the ancient Roman family of the Savelli, of the thirteenth century, presents an antique sarcophagus at its base, adorned with Bacchic emblems, which forms a singular contrast with the Gothic architecture of the mausoleum, the work of Agostino and Angelo di Siena, though Vasari says the design was given them by Giotto. The tomb, of another Giambattista Savelli, who died a cardinal in 1498, is of excellent sculpture, and has been thought worthy of Sansovino's school. The epitaph of De' Fredis, who found the Laocoon in his vineyard, shows the honour which then attended such discoveries, considered as public events, as really noble actions worthy of immortality....Qui ob proprias virtutes, et repertum Laocoontis divinum, quod in Vaticano cernis, feré respirans simulachrum, immortalitatem meruit anno Domini XDXXVIII. The remarkable tomb of Fra Matteo Acquasparta, general of the order, who died a cardinal in 1302, has no inscription, a singular fact which did not escape Dante's ardent and minute investigation into the things of Italy, when he opposed the liberality and moderation of Fra Matteo d'Acquasparta to the absolute principles and rigour of Ubertino di Casal, another chief of the order of Saint Francis: Ma non fia da Casal nè d' Acquasparta, See ante, ch. v. 3By Hercules! 'Parad. can. xit. 124. exclaimed the African chief The paintings of the chapel of Saint Margaret are among the best of the unequal Benefial. The roof of the chapel of Saint Anthony of Padua, by Nicolao Pesaro, is esteemed. A Transfiguration, by Sermoneta, evinces a happy imitator of Raphael. At the church of Aracœli is preserved the revered miraculous Santissimo Bambino, which is carried to dying persons, a small wooden figure which, according to the legend, was made out of a tree of the Garden of Olives by a pilgrim of the order of Saint Francis, and coloured and varnished by Saint Lake, while the sculptor was asleep after a three days' fast. The pompous procession of the Bambino takes place every year after vespers, at the feast of Epiphany. This infant Jesus, with its swaddling-clothes covered, perhaps, with millions worth of pearls and precious stones, is taken from the crib where it had lain exposed in theatrical state between Augustus and the sibyl from Christmas; three times it is shown to the people from the top of the majestic stairs of Aracœli, made of marble taken from the temple of Romulus, and covered with the prostrate and excited multitude. The little church of Saint Joseph, which has a Nativity, Carlo Maratta's best work, stands over the ancient and terrible Mamertine prison. This Roman dungeon, formed of enormous volcanic stones joined together without cement, a kind of Cyclopean construction of an aspect still fearful, is now a chapel consecrated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul, who are said by a tradition to have been imprisoned there; and the spring still seen there is taken for the miraculous fountain that they made to pour forth and Martinian, with forty martyrs their water for the baptism of saints Procelsus companions. In the succession of monuments at Rome there is a kind of morality that paints her history: the oldest monument of the kings is a prison, while the tomb of the Scipios, the oldest mowas in nument of the republic, represents the the Mamertine prison that Jugurtha died of shame and hunger, after entering it with a jest; 3 there, too, Syphax, king of Numidia, and Perseus, the last king when thrown almost naked into his prison, “thermæ are cold at Rome!" of Macedon, were confined; and afterwards the accomplices of Catiline, who could hear the voice of Cicero accusing them in the temple of Concord, were here strangled without a trial; different victims that all contributed to the grandeur of Rome. The church of Saint Luke was rebuilt by Pietro da Cortona, who was so pleased with its architecture, though inferior, that he called it his daughter. The front is so lofty that it masks the cupola, which is in tolerably good style. The rich subterranean chapel in which the body of Saint Martina reposes, the ancient patroness of the church, was erected by the same artist at his own cost, and he left his fortune to Saint Luke, amounting to 100,000 crowns. The Assumption, by Sebastiano Conca, though highly extolled, is ordinary, like the other paintings of the church. It volent deeds of that excellent man. CHAPTER XVII. Saint Theodore.-Saint Gregory.- Frescos of Domenichino and Guido-Imperia.-Navicella-Saint Stephen il Rotondo.—Saint Clement. The church of Saint Theodore is reared The Academy of Saint Luke, the insigne pontificia accademia romana di on the site of the ancient temple of Robelle arti di San Luca, a veritable Romulus, on the very spot where he was man Academy of fine arts, created in the year 1588 by Sixtus V., adjoins the church. Its apartments present many works by the great Italian masters and living professors. The patron of painters and of the Academy making the portrait of the Virgin with the infant Jesus, by Raphael, who has painted himself therein, has all his admirable qualities. The skull, so long shown as Raphael's, near which was written Bembo's celebrated and elaborated distich, Ille bie est Raphael, timuit quo sospite vinci Berum magna parens, et moriente mori,' which young artists used formerly to touch, in great ceremony, once a year with their pencils, this relic of painting, since the discovery of the body of the immortal artist, has sunk into that of the canon don Desiderio de' Adjutori, the obscure founder of the society of the Virtuosi of the Pantheon,--a narrow skull, unworthy of the honours it received and the pious veneration it so long inspired. The statue of Canova, who had been named perpetual president of the academy, commemorates one of the bene This distich has been happily translated into Italian: Questi é quel Raffael, cul vivo, vinta suckled by the wolf. The first Christians, who had great tact in turning popular traditions and prejudices to advantage, consecrated the temple to Saint Theodore, like Romulus, a warrior; with this view they also frequently changed the temples of the mother of the gods into churches dedicated to the Madonna. The people of Rome, who are apt to mix their antique reminiscences with their Christian creed, have corrupted Saint Theodore into San Toto; and mothers present their sick children at his altar, that they may be cured, and perhaps one day have the vigour of the first founder of their city. The antique church of Santa Francesca Romana, repaired in bad taste in 1615, has the rich tomb of the saint, by Bernini, and that of the French pope, Gregory XI. (Pierre Roger), erected in 1384 by the senate and people of Rome: the esteemed basso-relievo of Olivieri, a Roman sculptor and architect of the last century, though not free from the defects of the time, represents the Return of the Holy See to Rome in 1377. We there see the desolation and ruin of the eternal city, then reduced to seventeen thousand inhabitants, and more degraded, more fallen through the absence Esser temea natura, e morto, estinta. 2 See post, cb. xxiii. of the popes than the inroad of the barbarians. Under the vestibule is the mausoleum, in tolerably good style, of Antonio Rido of Padua, governor of the castle of Saint Angelo, deceased in 1475, on which he is represented on horseback and in arms. The solitary church of Saint Gregory| sul monte Celio, built on the site of the monastery founded by this Roman patrician, who became a great pope and a singing-master, is served by the Camal dulite monks. The front and double portico are elegant, airy works by Soria, an architect of the seventeenth century, who resisted the progress of bad taste for a considerable period. This church is principally indebted for its celebrity to the rival frescos of Domenichino and Guido in the chapel of Saint Andrew. The Scourging of the saint, by the former, is a chef-d'œuvre for elevation, force of design and expression, and beauty of composition; the flogger, with his back towards the beholder, is admirably drawn. The fresco of Guido, St. Andrew adoring the cross before his martyrdom, richer and more vigorous in colouring than Domenichino's, is after all inferior. At the bottom of the chapel is a statue of St. Gregory sitting, which was rough-hewn with genius by Michael Angelo, and finished by his pupil, the sculptor Lorrain Cordier, called Franciosino. The Concert of Angels, by Guido, on the roof of the gallery of the chapel of Saint Silvia, mother of Saint Gregory, though much praised, is not one of his best works. The view of the ruins of the Cæsars' palace is wonderfully picturesque from this chapel. The chapel of the Saint has a painting by Annibale Carraccio, superbly coloured, representing him. It must be confessed that if Saint Gregory, from religious zeal, was as much the enemy of the fine arts as is falsely pretended, he did not deserve to be so magnificently treated by them but the anonymous accusation of having destroyed ancient 'monuments and thrown statues into the Tiber, is an undoubted calumny, as no contemporary writer relates this action, which Saint Gregory had no right to execute, and which would have made so much noise at Rome, Constantinople, and throughout the Roman empire. 1 See post, ch, xxiii. | It was at Saint Gregory that the celebrated Roman courtesan Imperia, the Aspasia of the age of Leo X., the friend of Beroald, Sadolet, Campani, and Colocci, obtained the honour of a public monument and strange epitaph: Imperia cortisana Romana, quæ digna tanto nomine, raræ inter homines formæ specimen dedit; vixit annos XXVI dies XII, obiit 1511 die 15 augusti. Both monument and inscription were destroyed in the last century, not for scruple or decency, but by inadvertence during certain repairs. The existence of Imperia, and the kind of dignity of a Roman courtesan, are features characteristic of the pagan manners, if we may say so, of the literati at the revival. Imperia was sung by her learned friends in Latin and Italian verse. Bandello relates that such was the luxury of her apartments, that the ambassador of Spain repeated there the insolence of Diogenes, by spitting into the face of a servant, saying he could find no other place for it. Imperia seems also to have been very erudite, as we see in Bandello's description, that beside her music books, her lute, and other instruments, there lay several richly ornamented works in Latin and the vernacular tongue : Parecchi libretti volgari e latini riccamente adornati. In the fifth chapter of Paolo Giovio's treatise de Romanis piscibus (Basil, 1531), there is a very amusing story of an old Roman parasite, Titus Tamisius, who sent his valet to the market to ascertain where the best fish went to. Being informed that the head of an umbra was sent to one of the Conservators (according to an old usage that allowed these oflicials the head of fishes of extraordinary size), then presented to two cardinals, and to the banker Ghigi, be followed it with much fatigue and anxiety until it last went to Imperia, to whom Ghigi sent it crowned with flowers in a gold dish, and with whom the impudent Tamisius succeeded in dining. The daughter of Imperia, married at Siena, was a model of chastity; being entrapped, like Clarissa, into a house of ill fame, by Cardinal Petrucci, rather than yield she took poison and fell dead at the feet of her infamous ravisher. Geronimo Negro thus speaks of her unhappy fate in a letter to Marcantonio Micheli of Grotta Ferrata, of Decem Part, Illa, nov. 42. ber 19, 1522: Questo caso tanto più è degno di esser celebrato, e quasi preposto al fatto di Lucrezia, quanto, che questa donna fu figlia di una pubblica e famosa meretrice, che fu l' Imperia, cortigiana nobile in Roma, come sapete. The ancient church Santa Maria in Dominica, called della Navicella, from a little vessel put in front by Leo X., was cleverly renovated on Raphael's desigus. The portico is by Michael Angelo, and the frieze painted in clare-obscure, by Giulio Romano and Perino del Vaga. Saint Stephen il Rotondo, which is only open early on Sunday mornings, is an instance of an antique edifice (perhaps a temple dedicated to Claudius) converted into a church about the fifth or sixth century: its successive repairs show the retrogression of art. The numerous paintings of Pomarancio and Tempesta, representing different Martyrdoms of Saints, bad enough, are the most hideous and complete collection of executions that can be imagined. The antique church of Saint Clement presents the best preserved model of the disposition of the first basilics. How grand and popular does Christianity appear at its birth from this solemn arrangement, presenting a double pulpit for the public reading of the Epistle and the Gospel! We feel it a moral, positive, instructive religion, whose precepts are binding on all mankind without distinction. Some traces of this primitive religious equality seem perpetuated at Rome in the practices of the public services: every body kneels on the bare pavement of the temples, and we see nothing of the devotional comforts of our parish churches to mark a distinction of rank. The different compartments of the aisles also show the various grades, the holy hierarchy of the catechumens; the Church was then a militant body which had its degrees of advancement, and virtue alone produced the distance. It is no unreasonable supposition that in the centre of the atrium formerly stood the fountain in which the pagans purified themselves, probably the origin of the Christian holy-water vase. The foundation of the church of Saint Clement, with all its antiquity, is not so old as the fifth century, as some persons have stated, who confound it with another basilic of 'Lettere de' Principi. Venice, 1562, t. I, p. 81. the same name, which fell to ruin and was demolished by Pope Adrian I., about the close of the eighth century. The present church is of the ninth century, and it manifests the extent to which most of the traditions and practices employed in Roman buildings were perpetuated in the west, especially in Italy. The graceful frescos of the chapel of Saint Catherine, of Masaccio's youth, though badly retouched, still prove, after little less than four centuries, the talent of that great painter. The most remarkable tomb is cardinal Roverella's, an elegant work of the fifteenth century. CHAPTER XVIII. Saint John in Laterano.-Piazza -Obelisk.- Baptistry.-Scala Santa.-Sancta Sanctorum.- Front.Apostles. Corsini chapel.-Agrippa's urn.-Martin V.-Heads of Saints Peter and Paul.-Mosaics. -Painting of Grotto.-Abbé Cancellieri. On the cultivation of letters in Italy.-Door.- Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.-Convent library.-Porta Maggiore.-Basilic of Saint Laurence-Saint Bibiana. -Bernini's statue.-Saint Eusebius. The piazza of Saint John in Laterano presents the most colossal and finest of known obelisks, erected at Thebes by the illustrious Thoutmosis II., the same as King Maris, the enterprising creator of the lake; this obelisk, respected by Cambyses, who mutilated and threw down all besides, was carried off by Constantine, and exhumed in a broken state from the ruins of the Circus Major by Sixtus V., under the direction of Fontana, who re-erected it. This superb obelisk, a single block of red granite, ninety-nine feet high without the pedestal, covered with hieroglyphics most perfectly sculptured, has been sung by Tasso: L'obelisco di note impresso intorno, so much was the poet's imagination inspired by the apparition of these old and mystic monuments. All history is found at Rome, from that of Egypt to the latest times, from the Pharaohs down to the kings and princes of Napoleon's family. This admirable city assembles the mysterious monuments of Egypt, the poetic chefs-d'œuvre of the Greeks, and her own grand monuments. The Baptistry of Constantine, the Rime. Part. II. 345. See ante, ch. 1. |
