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Dec. 22nd, 2005 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbRome is a city that repays walking and having time to spend. It does not offer the best of itself to visitors in a hurry, if-it's-Wednesday-it-must-be-the-Sistine-Chapel clock-bound types; although its wealth and splendour is such that even these come-and-gone travellers will leave with grand impressions, and not aware of what they have missed.
Incomparably the best way to see it is on foot. The historical centre and archaeological areas are large enough to be tremendous - no city in the world can offer such a variety of different experiences - but not too large to walk across. A normally healthy young or middle-aged person can walk the circuit of the imperial walls, or go from the Vatican to the Lateran and the Appian Archaeological Park (at the opposite ends of the city), in less than a day. I have done it, several times, and I am fat and unfit.
And just walking around, losing yourself even, in the historical areas, is a hugely rewarding experience. There are quarters where every turn takes you to a Roman ruin, a medieval building, a baroque church, a quaint or unusual palace, a garden, or a museum. Here a hero of Polish or Argentinian independence lived; there, Goethe or St.Thomas Aquinas stayed when they visited the city; this church holds the remains of a great saint, that one an incomparable canvas by Guercino or Caravaggio or Raphael.
Yesterday I did something I had long wanted to do, visiting the basilica of Santa Pudenziana (St.Pudentiana), one of the most ancient in Rome. Tucked away in Via Urbana, a minor side road off Santa Maria Maggiore, this is not a very well-known monument, but it has great claims to attention. It is one of the most ancient churches in the world, built originally in the fourth century; and while most of the building today is baroque - with, from what I could see, some very attractive paintings - its glory is a great ancient mosaic, as ancient as the basilica itself and barely damaged at all, featuring a tremendous Christ
surrounded by the twelve apostles, St.Pudentiana herself, and the four apocalyptic beasts who represent the four Gospels.
I had heard of this work of art and wanted to see it, but, on the whole, the basilica disappointed me. And that is not because it was not beautiful and worth a visit; in any city but Rome, a building so noble and ancient would be regarded as a national treasure. Unfortunately, it was managed with almost impious insensitivity. To begin with, at the very entrance of the building someone had hung a large five-pointed star in translucent white paper, hung with streamers; an object that would suit a children's Christmas party in a modern nursery, but decidedly not the solemn entranceway to an ancient church. Likewise, the rest of the church had a number of rather tacky and contemporary Christmas decorations, showing neither any notable artistic ambition nor any sympathy with their surroundings. Also, the church was set around with a number of side chapels, each, apparently, featuring a Baroque painting; but for some reason, the lights had been hung on the pillars between the chapels, plunging the chapels themselves into Stygian darkness (and negating their purpose, which should be prayer and meditation upon the sacred scenes presented there) and throwing the light on the sterile mass of the dividing pillars.
None of this can reasonably be ascribed to lack of resources. The very same expenditure, in even moderately sensitive hands, would have made the basilica shine like the little treasure it is. It is pure brute insensitivity. And the paper star and other contemporary junk shows all too well what kind of insensitivity we are dealing with here - one all too familiar to many of us Catholics. It is the ignorance of the "modernizing" priest who pays no attention to the fascination of antiquity and is all for using modern and contemporary idioms and objects, no matter how unsuited they may be. Indeed, this is a comparatively harmless instance of this evil: no harm had actually been done to the artworks or to the structure of the church. But no decent respect was paid to them, either.
Incomparably the best way to see it is on foot. The historical centre and archaeological areas are large enough to be tremendous - no city in the world can offer such a variety of different experiences - but not too large to walk across. A normally healthy young or middle-aged person can walk the circuit of the imperial walls, or go from the Vatican to the Lateran and the Appian Archaeological Park (at the opposite ends of the city), in less than a day. I have done it, several times, and I am fat and unfit.
And just walking around, losing yourself even, in the historical areas, is a hugely rewarding experience. There are quarters where every turn takes you to a Roman ruin, a medieval building, a baroque church, a quaint or unusual palace, a garden, or a museum. Here a hero of Polish or Argentinian independence lived; there, Goethe or St.Thomas Aquinas stayed when they visited the city; this church holds the remains of a great saint, that one an incomparable canvas by Guercino or Caravaggio or Raphael.
Yesterday I did something I had long wanted to do, visiting the basilica of Santa Pudenziana (St.Pudentiana), one of the most ancient in Rome. Tucked away in Via Urbana, a minor side road off Santa Maria Maggiore, this is not a very well-known monument, but it has great claims to attention. It is one of the most ancient churches in the world, built originally in the fourth century; and while most of the building today is baroque - with, from what I could see, some very attractive paintings - its glory is a great ancient mosaic, as ancient as the basilica itself and barely damaged at all, featuring a tremendous Christ
surrounded by the twelve apostles, St.Pudentiana herself, and the four apocalyptic beasts who represent the four Gospels.
I had heard of this work of art and wanted to see it, but, on the whole, the basilica disappointed me. And that is not because it was not beautiful and worth a visit; in any city but Rome, a building so noble and ancient would be regarded as a national treasure. Unfortunately, it was managed with almost impious insensitivity. To begin with, at the very entrance of the building someone had hung a large five-pointed star in translucent white paper, hung with streamers; an object that would suit a children's Christmas party in a modern nursery, but decidedly not the solemn entranceway to an ancient church. Likewise, the rest of the church had a number of rather tacky and contemporary Christmas decorations, showing neither any notable artistic ambition nor any sympathy with their surroundings. Also, the church was set around with a number of side chapels, each, apparently, featuring a Baroque painting; but for some reason, the lights had been hung on the pillars between the chapels, plunging the chapels themselves into Stygian darkness (and negating their purpose, which should be prayer and meditation upon the sacred scenes presented there) and throwing the light on the sterile mass of the dividing pillars.
None of this can reasonably be ascribed to lack of resources. The very same expenditure, in even moderately sensitive hands, would have made the basilica shine like the little treasure it is. It is pure brute insensitivity. And the paper star and other contemporary junk shows all too well what kind of insensitivity we are dealing with here - one all too familiar to many of us Catholics. It is the ignorance of the "modernizing" priest who pays no attention to the fascination of antiquity and is all for using modern and contemporary idioms and objects, no matter how unsuited they may be. Indeed, this is a comparatively harmless instance of this evil: no harm had actually been done to the artworks or to the structure of the church. But no decent respect was paid to them, either.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 08:46 pm (UTC)Almost all of the Catholic Churches I have been to in the US, which haven't been many, really buy into that whole stark moderness that I think started inth 1950's-60's. I saw a picture of my old church around 1930-40 before they gutted it, and it was just beautiful. It had nothing on churches I have visited in Europe, but now it's just a stark soul-less building.