The Artist and the Eternal City by Loyd Grossman

Author:Loyd Grossman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2021-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

The arch on the left of this second-century tomb carving may show part of the complex of the temple of Isis. Detail of the Tomb of the Haterii, a family of building contractors who also appear to have been involved with the building of the Colosseum (centre)

Just under two hundred years later, this was the site given to the Dominicans to build themselves a church. Out of the nine-hundred-plus churches in Rome, it is the only one built in the Gothic style. The thirteenth century, when Gothic prevailed, was not a propitious time for church-building in Rome, which was then plagued by political and economic instability, a weak papacy and vicious infighting amongst the local aristocracy. In spite of these adverse conditions, the members of the new Dominican Order were determined to have an important presence in the capital of the Christian world. Their mother church, Santa Sabina, was up on the relatively remote Aventine Hill and, with their emphasis on preaching in the vernacular and their desire to reach the growing number of city dwellers, the Dominicans wanted a base in the most densely populated part of town, the Campo Marzio.

Building work on this grand church began in 1280. It was allegedly supervised by the Dominican lay brothers Sisto and Ristoro, the architects of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, which would be a neat story if it could be believed. What is true, however, is that from the beginning the church had strong links with Florence and Tuscany. It was here, for instance, that St Catherine of Siena was buried, as was the artist monk Fra Angelico, one of the fathers of Renaissance art, described on his tomb as ‘the flower of Tuscany’. As the most international city in Europe, Rome had many churches serving particular nationalities, including non-Roman Italians. Santa Maria sopra Minerva remained informally the national church in Rome for the Florentines right up until the late sixteenth century and the building of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini by the Medici pope Leo X. Many Florentine artists contributed to the church. One of Michelangelo’s weaker works, the Risen Christ, stands by the high altar, a nude figure wearing a risible bronze loincloth added by prudish clerics. A generation earlier, Filippino Lippi, former apprentice to Botticelli, decorated the church’s Carafa Chapel with frescoes, including one depicting the Dominican theologian St Thomas Aquinas triumphing over heresy. (This seems particularly appropriate, as the neighbouring monastery was the headquarters of the Roman Inquisition and the site of the 1633 show trial of another Tuscan, Galileo, when he was punished for the heresy of believing that the earth revolved around the sun.)

Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and its famous Risen Christ by Michelangelo, from the 16th-century guidebook, Le Cose Meravigliose dell’alma città di Roma

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