LIFE: BAROQUE IN ROME

CHIAVARI, Italy - First time visitors to the Vatican in Rome are often surprised to see just how wedding cake fancy the interior of St. Peter’s Basilica is. There seem to be curlicues and swirls and chubby cheeked angels in the most unexpected places, with hardly a straight line in sight.

St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican

The interior is the work of GianLorenzo Bernini, but it was the man who commissioned him, Pope Urban VIII, who demanded the flamboyant architecture. More curves, he said, more grandeur, more drama, and he wanted it not just for St. Peter’s but for all Catholic churches. It was all part of his plan, and Bernini and other 17^th century architects delivered.

The Catholic Church was under attack. It was serious. Too many people were being lured away by Martin Luther and his Reformation Movement. The Church knew it had to fight back, and fight back hard, if it was going to stop the flow of once faithful Catholics from joining the Protestants.

St. Peter's Square, Vatican

While new religious groups, like the Calvinists, were preaching that churches and church services should be simple, stripped down affairs, the Catholic Church saw things differently. It argued that a God of greatness and power should be worshiped with the kinds of rituals, ceremonies and churches worthy of these divine qualities. It was this affirmation of the beauty and grandiosity of faith that led to the development of Baroque art and architecture, elements that would become the Church’s first line of defense.

In Rome, churches started popping up like mushrooms after a rain. It wasn’t long before the city began to take on a new look, becoming a city of beautiful churches, the city we see today.

But not all Romans were convinced the new fangle design ideas the architects were producing were good. One architect in particular seemed to draw a lot of criticism; his name was Francesco Borromini.

San Carlino, Rome 

Time and time again his designs would cause the Romans to stop and look, and scratch their heads and wonder what in the world was he thinking. The curvy façade on the church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, (called San Carlino by the Romans) is a good example. What kind of person thinks a curvy façade on a church is acceptable, the Romans wanted to know.

But it was more than just the façade of San Carlino they objected to. When Borromini topped the church’s bell tower with a roof that looked like a pagoda, they declared him totally mad.

But while his flights of architectural fancy were duly noted and loudly denounced, it was precisely because of them that the elaborate style became known as baroque, for in those days baroque meant abnormal. 

St. Agnese in Agone, Rome (Architect: Borromini)

Borromini’s greatest rival was GianLorenzo Bernini. Bernini was Pope Urban’s favorite artist, and much to Borromini’s dismay, it was Bernini the Pope turned to when he wanted to give the interior of St. Peter’s at the Vatican a makeover.

Bernini was good choice. His work was not only dramatic but also beautiful. Ask anyone who has visited St. Peter’s what they think of the soaring sculpted bronze canopy that covers the papal altar in the center of the Basilica. They will most likely tell you it took their breath away. Bernini had that kind of power.

He went on to become one of the most influential artists/architects of the time. You see his work everywhere in Rome: from the sculptured fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona, to the Barcaccia (boat) fountain at the foot of the Spanish Steps, to the statue of the Ecstasy of St. Teresa in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria.

Fountain of the Four Rivers, Rome (Architect: Bernini)

But perhaps his greatest achievement is the colonnade that encloses the piazza in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. To be held in that embrace as the Pope blesses the people of Rome and the world - urbi et orbi - is truly a heart stopping experience.

By the middle of the seventeenth century, Baroque had moved from religious art and architecture to the preferred style for grand palazzi throughout Italy. From Turin, to Venice, and all the way down to Sicily, Italy was soon afire with the beauty and complexity of this new style. It was everywhere.

Palazzo Carnignano, Turin 

In Turin, the Palazzo Carignano, considered the most flamboyant private house in the 17^th century, would have made Borromini smile, while in Venice, the play of light and dark on the ornate façade of Ca’ Pesaro could have been in a painting by the artist Caravaggio.

In Sicily, Sicilian architects took the curves and flourishes of Roman Baroque, and by adding grinning masks and puffy-cheeked putti made it their own. The details in the decoration of the church of San Domenico in Palermo will both surprise and astound you.

San Domenico, Palermo, Sicily

Baroque began in Rome in the 17^th century as a way to give the Papacy a means of restoring its place in the world, but it soon became so much more. As it migrated from Rome to all parts of Italy and beyond, it inspired artists and architects, writers and musicians around the world, and it still does today.

Copyright © 2016 Phyllis Macchioni

LIFE: The Quintili Brothers

CHIAVARI, Italy - The Quintili brothers, Sextus Quintilius Maximus and Sextus Quintilius Condianus, held Rome’s highest political office, that of Consul.  In 151 BC. they decided to build on the foundation of an old Hadrian era villa and create what would become the largest and grandest residence Rome had ever seen.

 The Ruins of the Villa Quintile

The villa of the Quintili, and the adjoining farming complex of Santa Maria Nova, covered such a large area along the old Appian Way, that when it was first discovered centuries later, everyone thought they had found another Rome, an older Rome. It had to be a town, they reasoned, for no villa could be so expansive. They even named the archeological site Vecchia Roma.

But it wasn’t another Rome. Needless to say a villa of such extraordinary size and beauty did not go unnoticed by the Gladiator Emperor Commodus Antonius. At his first opportunity he declared the villa Imperial property and had the brothers arrested for treason and put to death. And then he moved in. 

The Cryptoporticus 

He made some changes to the villa including a private bath complex fed by its own aqueduct, and a separate steam room for the Emperor's Pretorian guards. The a hippodrome, a racetrack for horse and chariot racing may have been the work of the Qunitili brothers, but most certainly it was the Emperor who had added an additional training area for gladiators.

Today the villa and S. Maria Nova are part of the Appia Antica archaeological park, and what was found in the most recent excavation has set Rome and the Romans buzzing. It is a work of extraordinary engineering, a semi-subterranean gallery or passageway whose vaulting supports portico structures above ground, lit from openings at the top of its arches. It’s called a cryptoporticus. 

 Montanus, The Retianius

The cryptoporticus may be a simple brick structure but it bears the marks of an extraordinary history. The walls, which were 6 to 7 ft. high were covered with white marble with blue-green veins pulled from the Algerian quarries of Hippo, and accented with strips of red marble taken from ancient quarries in Greece

Two perfectly preserved black and white mosaic floors were found, one depicting a gladiator named Montanus, a retiarius with net and trident. The other floor design shows horses tied together in pairs around a tree. The horses were for the fationes, the teams that vied for victory during the chariot races that were held at the racetrack of the villa.

Signatures of Slaves and Consuls 

But perhaps the most amazing part of this new discovery is the secret stash of bricks that was found, carved with the names of the consuls who ordered the work – Petino and Aproniano (123 BC). Even more amazing is that above the names of the consuls there is a series of dots clustered together like Morse code, which is how workers and slaves signed the bricks on projects they worked on. Even though we can’t decipher what the dots actually say, they do tell us that these men were there and created this structure.

The archeological site houses a museum with marble friezes and sculptures that once adorned the villa. You can also visit the nympheum, a natural grotto where local nymphs were thought to reside. There is also the hall of the tepidarium, a warm room which was the first stop after working up a sweat in the palaestra or gym and the frigidarium, the cold pool.

The Frigidarium 

Opening Hours 

Open every day from 9.00 to 16.30. Closed Mondays (except Easter Monday), 25 December, 1 January.

Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays: entrance is also from Via Appia Antica, n° 290.

Tickets 

Single ticket valid 7 days at 3 sites: Baths of Caracalla, Villa of the Quintilii, Mausoleum of Caecilia Metella.

Full Price: € 6.00.

Reduced: € 3.00 for citizens of the European Union 18 to 25 European Union teachers.

Free: Visitors 17 and under.

Copyright © 2016 Phyllis Macchioni

LIFE: The Coliseum of Rome

CHIAVARI, Italy – It was this photo of the police keeping an eye on Rome’s coliseum after the attacks on Paris that got me thinking about what ISIS has done to national and global treasures. 

Rome's Coliseum 

The footage of them destroying the 2,000 year-old Arch of Triumph in the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria, the Buddhas of Bamiyam in Afghanistan and so many others brought tears to my eyes. Treasures that have been preserved for centuries were heartlessly blown up, and turned into clouds of dust.   

The very thought of it happening to the coliseum is more than my heart can bear. Rome’s 2,000 year old coliseum is the greatest architectural and engineering strictures ever built. Like the Buddhas and the Arch of Triumph in Syria, it is one of the wonders of the world. 

In its prime between 50,000 and 80,000 spectators could be entertained by the performances that were held there. In that long ago world of the Roman Empire, it was used by the Caesars to celebrate their successes, their triumphs, and there were many for it was Rome that ruled the world. At that time the Roman Empire included most of Western Europe, including France and Spain, the Netherlands and England, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the whole of North Africa from Egypt to Morocco.

It took about seven or eight years to build the coliseum, and when it was completed the Romans celebrated with 100 days of games. There were gladiatorial contests, mock sea battles, animal hunts, executions, re-enactments of famous battles and dramas based on Classical mythology.

However, there was one spectacle that was never seen in Rome, and that was Christians being fed to the lions. While it may be a story the tour guides at Rome’s Coliseum like to tell, it is just a story recounted in Hollywood productions like Quo Vadis and Ben Hur. It never happened in real life. We know this because in the actual history of ancient Rome, there is not one word about it. Christians may have died in other arenas, but never in Rome.

There were three main types of games that entertained the ancient Romans, and they were presented like food menus are today, with a primo, secondo and desert. To get things moving, the primo was usually a spectacle of beast against beast.  Groups of wild animals that had not been fed for a while, would be set loose to hunt each other down.

The secondo, or second act, involved a hunter, or bestiaries as they were called, in a battle between man and beast. The men were usually armed with a shield and a spear, but sometimes they were just given a bow and arrows.

The hunters became famous for their daring deeds and had their own fan clubs. The Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis, once wrote this about his favorite hunter, Meleager, “he killed a boar, then a bear and then a magnificent lion, and then, taking a long shot at a racing leopard, he killed him too.”  Meleager took first prize in the games that day.

But there was more to come – the gladiators -  the featured event of the program.  With trumpets blaring and drums rolling, the gladiators chosen for that day’s entertainment would take center stage. When they were all assembled they would parade around the stadium accompanied by the music of the trumpeters and drummers.

The British historian Michael Grant lists about a dozen major categories of gladiators. Mostly they were criminals, murders, robbers, arsonists, men convicted of treason, and prisoners of war that had not been sold as slaves.

Some of the gladiators were heavily armed with a large oblong shield to protect their bodies and a helmet with a visor to protect their heads. On one leg, they wore leather or metal protection and they carried a sword or lance for a weapon.

Other gladiators were lightly armed with a small shield, leather protection on both legs and a curved scimitar for a weapon. There was another, even less protected category that was equipped with a net for the left hand and a long three-pronged harpoon for the right. The idea was to catch the opponent in the net and then harpoon him. Sometimes a lasso was substituted for the net.

Then there were those who wore chainmail and fought on horseback like medieval knights, and those who fought from chariots, a trick they learned from the British In the reliefs, mosaics and paintings from Roman times we see gladiators fighting to the death. With shields raised, swords and daggers drawn, fishnets and harpoons ready to strike, most ended up dead or dying in the arena of the coliseum. 

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That included female gladiators as well. At one gladiatorial show that was held during the 1^st century to celebrate the Festival of Satturnalia, women, who had not been trained to use a sword did battle against groups of dwarfs, giving and receiving wounds and even dying.  Not every type of encounter was presented at every game, each program was designed for the occasion.

One account, written about the games for the inauguration of the Coliseum, says that 5,000 animals were slaughtered for that event alone. And an eyewitness to the games staged by the Emperor Trajan to celebrate the end of the Dacian wars in what is now modern Romania, wrote that about 11,000 wild and tame animals died during that spectacle. 

We look at the Coliseum today and wonder how such brutality was not just tolerated, but celebrated. And maybe that is the real purpose of preserving our past – to make us think about ourselves and what we tolerate and celebrate.  

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