If you are visiting the Piazza Navona - and many visitors to Rome are! - take the time to go north one block and visit Sant'Agostino. Exit the north end of the piazza, turn right, and look to the left of McDonald's. There you will find a piazza with a white facade in the style of the Renaissance facade of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. This is the basilica dedicated to St. Augustine.
First of all, let us discuss the front of the church. If you are in Rome, the color should be familiar to you, because the travertine marble facade was created using marble physically removed from the Colosseum! When the church underwent renovation during the Renaissance, the architect took already existing marble from the Colosseum and repurposed it for the facade of the basilica. The date of this reconstruction is displayed in the center of the facade, 1483.
This facade is a near duplicate of the slightly earlier facade of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, which was designed by the great Renaissance architect, Leon Battista Alberti. The focus is on order, proportion, and classical elements. There are no decorative elements, to speak of, other than the architectural elements. Much like Brunelleschi and the church of San Lorenzo in Florence, the elements speak for themselves. If, you put decorations, whether sculpture or mosaics, then viewers will be looking at the decoration, and not the architecture.
One of the purposes of the facade is the prepare the visitor for what lies behind, or inside. The lower half of the facade shows three portals, with the center portal larger than the other two. This portends the interior of the church.
But note the classical style of this lower half. The three doors, or openings, and the medallions above them evoke the Roman triumphal arches. The upper half consists of the design of an ancient temple, with its columns and triangular pediment. The decorative flourish of the volutes - the curly elements - serve to navigate visually that space between the upper and lower components, as well as physically cover the plain roof behind.
In addition to the classical elements of the triumphal arch and temple, the inscription on the front evokes not only ancient Roman inscriptions in general, but the inscription on the most well-known Roman temple, that of the Pantheon, just a few blocks away. The inscription of the Pantheon tells us that Marcus Agrippa made this, and ends, appropriately, with the Latin word "FECIT", which means "made" or "built" this. The inscription on Sant'Agostino begins with Guilliermus, referring to Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville, the sponsor, so to speak, of the reconstruction, and ends with "FECIT". This is a specific and purposeful call to the Pantheon. Many inscriptions in Rome present the viewer with a similar message, but use words such as "dedicates" (this building) or employs the common shorthand of inscriptions of leaving the verb off. (At some point, when someone puts their name on a building, everyone knows that that individual is the one responsible.) But here, during the flourishing of the Renaissance, not only is an individual referenced, but in a specific manner of the most famous ancient building of Rome located literally blocks away. This is not an accident.
Entering the building, you are met with a sumptuous mix of brown marble mixed with frescoes and chapels off the side aisles. The first chapel on the left, the Caveletti Chapel, contains a work of Caravaggio, the Madonna of Loreto.
The image caused a stir when completed in 1606, for it showed a barefoot Madonna, as barefoot as the peasants approaching in reverence.
St. Agostino also contains a fresco by Raphael (or at least his school).
Notice the influence of Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. Raphael was in Rome at the time Michaelangelo was working on the ceiling, and this work recalls in particular the prophet Isaiah from the chapel.
And finally, at least for this post, in a church dedicated to Saint Augustine, it is appropriate that the mother of Saint Augustine, Santa Monica, is located here.
Originally buried in Ostia, she was moved here to the city of Rome by the same cardinal whose name is on the facade, Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville. Santa Monica is the patron saint of mothers, and as you walk through the basilica, note the other works of art related to motherhood.
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