Rome

To Roman Catholics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the adjective ‘‘Roman’’ had a meaning that was literally physical. For them, the Christian gospel was completely rooted in classical history: indeed, the Nicene Creed specifies that Jesus was ‘‘crucified under Pontius Pilate’’ - that is, in Roman-occupied Judaea during the reign of Tiberius. Artists from the first days of Christianity often tried to show biblical figures in togas and matrons’ stolae; scholars since the fifteenth century had subjected early Christianity to the same kinds of investigations they directed toward the ancient Romans, Etruscans, and Greeks. The connection of actual places with classical and sacred history, both in Europe and in the Holy Land, reinforced the natural associations between classical and Christian culture. This association was nowhere more powerful than in Rome itself, where the institution ofthe papacy traced its history back to the tradition that St. Peter had been crucified in the Circus of the emperor Nero in AD 64. A no-less-venerable tradition traced the presence and martyrdom of St. Paul to the capital city, to the same year and the same notorious emperor. Long after it had ceased to be a political capital ofany consequence, Rome continued to attract pilgrims, who associated its ancient ruins automatically with tales ofthe saints and apostles. It is not surprising, then, to find that every aspect of Baroque art, thought, and spirituality is pervaded by an awareness of the classical world.

The distinctive qualities of Baroque art drew their inspiration from a religious event that drew out over nearly a generation: the Council of Trent, convened in 1545 by Pope Paul III (reigned 1534-49), but concluded only in 1563. Its eventual decrees for reforming every aspect of the Catholic Church included strict guidelines for religious art and architecture, beginning with the form of churches themselves. The traditional basilica with central nave and side aisles, a design borrowed from the ancient Romans at the very beginning of Christianity, was now to be replaced by buildings that emphasized a single, unified place of worship. Side aisles were transformed into side chapels, and the freestanding high altar was pushed to the very back of the church so that clergy and congregation visibly shared the same space. The supreme model for all churches, as it neared completion in the late sixteenth century, was St. Peter’s Basilica, its interior articulated by Corinthian pilasters modeled directly on those of the Pantheon and crowned by a tall, immense, coffered dome that immediately became - and remains - the dominant feature of the Roman skyline. The Council also decreed that painting and sculpture should convey clear, simple messages rather than the riddling imagery so favored by Renaissance artists, in works like Donatello’s David, Botticelli’s Primavera, Raphael’s School of Athens, or even Michelangelo’s intricate Sistine Chapel ceiling. Nothing, however, prevented making these new, easily understandable works of art as visually ravishing as anything that had gone before. Thus Federico Barocci (ca. 1535-1612), the favorite painter of the austere St. Philip Neri, specialized in blushing flesh and furry animals - cats, sheep, dogs - whose incredible softness has invited surreptitious touches ever since, much to the detriment of the paintings’ surfaces. The realism of Baroque painters has often been contrasted with the classical tradition that inspired earlier generations, but in fact classicism and realism worked together to bring ancient Bible stories vividly home to modern viewers. The most dramatically innovative painter of the Baroque period, Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1571-1610), mixed classical references with real-life characters as cleverly and as pervasively as his ‘‘classical’’ rival, Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), whose own low-life paintings, like The Bean Eater (Galleria Colonna, Rome), are as grubbily persuasive as Caravaggio’s. Thus Caravaggio’s Deposition from the Cross, now in the Vatican Museum, recreates the poses of figures from an ancient Roman marble sarcophagus depicting the death of Meleager. But rather than mourning the dead Greek hero, Caravaggio’s men and women, dressed like contemporary Italians, lament the dead Christ (who, in an explicit nod to a specific local Christian tradition, is wrapped in the Turin Shroud). Caravaggio’s powerful mixture of biblical history, classical form, and contemporary detail shows the extent to which the classical tradition, which in a large sense included Hebrew, pagan, and local Christian culture, pervaded every aspect of religious life by the end of the sixteenth century.

The greatest Baroque sculptor, Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), studied his ancient models as intently as had his Renaissance predecessors, Donatello or Michelangelo, and as with these Renaissance sculptors, the skill of the ancients challenged him to the point that he transformed his own medium. Bernini’s facility at carving marble was, like Michelangelo’s, unrivaled in his day, and that very skill drove him to compete with the ancients for ingenuity of pose, variety of texture, and the quality that both ancient and modern critics praised above all others in works of art: likeness to life. The Apollo in his Apollo and Daphne (1622-5) is evidently the same Apollo from the Vatican Belvedere, but set into panting pursuit of the nymph whose limbs are turning into sculpted marble branches, one of them - characteristically of Bernini - rudely poking Apollo where it is most likely to hurt. The complexity of the composition and its meticulous details (some added in stucco) come as close as carved marble has ever come to pulsing life, and by carving the Apollo Belvedere on the run, Bernini suggests, in effect, that he is kicking the classical tradition of sculpture into new motion. Created for a cardinal, Scipione Borghese, Bernini’s tour de force retells a classical myth with the conceptual simplicity and sumptuous visual detail that sums up the essence of Baroque art. Furthermore, like any seventeenth-century churchman, clever Cardinal Scipione would have been able to offer the statue’s viewers any number of Christian lessons to be learned from the sun god’s futile pursuit of his nymph, and her transformation into the symbol of poetry and music; classical myths had been ‘‘moralized’’ to Christian purpose ever since the Middle Ages. Bernini was more than a masterful sculptor of classical myths: his portrayals of religious ecstasy, his Saint Teresa in Ecstasy (164752; church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome) and his Blessed Ludovica Albertoni (1674; church of San Francesco a Ripa, Rome), both housed in chapels of his own design, exploit not only his skill as a sculptor but also as an architect. Following the lead of ancient Roman architects, he set these figures beneath specially designed windows, exploiting the symbolic and visual force of natural light to convey the idea of divine illumination.

The most innovative Baroque architect, Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), was in many ways the most dedicated student of Rome’s monuments, not only those of the ancients, but also the works of Early Christian and medieval builders. He pored over the principles that had guided earlier architects in their placement and decoration of architectural elements, the detailing that enabled them to achieve the qualities of harmony, order, and proportion. And then he changed it all around, making up new forms of columns, changing squares to triangles, egg-and-dart moldings to flying cherub’s heads, circles to ovals. At the same time, he infused his newly invented forms with an energy that was essentially based on modern mathematics. Ancient architects created their designs with ruler and compass; Borromini’s curves, infinitely more dynamic and instantly recognizable, are formed by a compass with a moving center; similar investigations of motion would lead shortly afterward to the simultaneous invention of the calculus by Newton and Leibniz. Borromini invested his architectural detailing with all the richness of sculpture; his palm fronds and cherub wings literally stroke the pediments that contain them, and his sculpted fruits are ripe to bursting. His buildings are as sensuous as the painting and sculpture created by his contemporaries. Like these other works of art, moreover, Borromini’s architecture conveys strong, clear messages, not only architectural messages about load and support, horizontals and verticals, but also Christian messages about divine illumination. There is no architect in the seventeenth century who was more expert at bathing an enclosed space in light, a skill he refined by observing the example of the ancient Romans in spaces like the Baths of Diocletian.

The energetic motion contained in Baroque artworks often visibly bursts its boundaries: painted ceilings literally leak out of their architectural frames, sculptures squirm or fly free of pediments and pedestals, facades twist and pop in and out. The lines between the arts may be erased entirely, and it is not surprising, therefore, to discover that many Baroque artists excelled in more than one skill: Bernini painted and put on plays in addition to his work as sculptor and architect, and many of his works are glorious mixtures of media. Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) was an extraordinary painter as well as an architect of rare inventiveness; Borromini’s detailing, as noted, already often qualifies as sculpture. Metalwork, embroidery, and inlaid marble often rounded out the visual impact of Baroque design, and many of the spaces were specifically designed for music. Always, however, the example of the ancients served as an inspiration: the rotating ceiling of Nero’s Golden House, sprinkling guests with perfume; the ingenious mingling of stucco, painting, and architecture in ancient Roman ruins like the Golden House and the tombs of the Appian Way; the mosaics of the catacombs and basilicas of Christians who were still full-fledged ancient Romans.