Mannerism
Mannerism known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, when the Baroque style replaced it. Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century. Stylistically, Mannerism encompasses a variety of approaches influenced by, reacting to, the harmonious ideals associated with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and early Michelangelo. Where High Renaissance art emphasizes proportion and ideal beauty, Mannerism exaggerates such qualities resulting in compositions that are asymmetrical or unnaturally elegant; the style is notable for its intellectual sophistication as well as its artificial qualities. It favors compositional tension and instability rather than the balance and clarity of earlier Renaissance painting. Mannerism in literature and music is notable for its florid style and intellectual sophistication; the definition of Mannerism and the phases within it continue to be a subject of debate among art historians.
For example, some scholars have applied the label to certain early modern forms of literature and music of the 16th and 17th centuries. The term is used to refer to some late Gothic painters working in northern Europe from about 1500 to 1530 the Antwerp Mannerists—a group unrelated to the Italian movement. Mannerism has been applied by analogy to the Silver Age of Latin literature; the word mannerism derives from the Italian maniera, meaning "style" or "manner". Like the English word "style", maniera can either indicate a specific type of style or indicate an absolute that needs no qualification. In the second edition of his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters and Architects, Giorgio Vasari used maniera in three different contexts: to discuss an artist's manner or method of working. Vasari was a Mannerist artist, he described the period in which he worked as "la maniera moderna", or the "modern style". James V. Mirollo describes how "bella maniera" poets attempted to surpass in virtuosity the sonnets of Petrarch.
This notion of "bella maniera" suggests that artists who were thus inspired looked to copying and bettering their predecessors, rather than confronting nature directly. In essence, "bella maniera" utilized the best from a number of source materials, synthesizing it into something new; as a stylistic label, "Mannerism" is not defined. It was used by Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt and popularized by German art historians in the early 20th century to categorize the uncategorizable art of the Italian 16th century — art, no longer found to exhibit the harmonious and rational approaches associated with the High Renaissance. “High Renaissance” connoted a period distinguished by harmony and the revival of classical antiquity. The term Mannerist was redefined in 1967 by John Shearman following the exhibition of Mannerist paintings organised by Fritz Grossmann at Manchester City Art Gallery in 1965; the label “Mannerism” was used during the 16th century to comment on social behaviour and to convey a refined virtuoso quality or to signify a certain technique.
However, for writers, such as the 17th-century Gian Pietro Bellori, "la maniera" was a derogatory term for the perceived decline of art after Raphael in the 1530s and 1540s. From the late 19th century on, art historians have used the term to describe art that follows Renaissance classicism and precedes the Baroque, yet historians differ as to whether Mannerism is a movement, or a period. By the end of the High Renaissance, young artists experienced a crisis: it seemed that everything that could be achieved was achieved. No more difficulties, technical or otherwise, remained to be solved; the detailed knowledge of anatomy, light and the way in which humans register emotion in expression and gesture, the innovative use of the human form in figurative composition, the use of the subtle gradation of tone, all had reached near perfection. The young artists needed to find a new goal, they sought new approaches. At this point Mannerism started to emerge; the new style developed between 1510 and 1520 either in Florence, or in Rome, or in both cities simultaneously.
This period has been described as a "natural extension" of the art of Andrea del Sarto and Raphael. Michelangelo developed his own style at an early age, a original one, admired at first often copied and imitated by other artists of the era. One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, subsequent artists attempted to imitate it. Other artists learned Michelangelo's impassioned and personal style by copying the works of the master, a standard way that students learned to paint and sculpt, his Sistine Chapel ceiling provided examples for them to follow, in particular his representation of collected figures called ignudi and of the Libyan Sibyl, his vestibule to the Laurentian Library, the figures on his Medici tombs, above all his Last Judgment. The Michelangelo was one of the great role models of Mannerism. Young artists stole drawings from him. In his book Lives of the Most Eminent Painters and Architects
Crossing (architecture)
A crossing, in ecclesiastical architecture, is the junction of the four arms of a cruciform church. In a oriented church, the crossing gives access to the nave on the west, the transept arms on the north and south, the choir, as the first part of the chancel, on the east; the crossing is sometimes surmounted by a dome. A large crossing tower is common on English Gothic cathedrals. With the Renaissance, building a dome above the crossing became popular; because the crossing is open on four sides, the weight of the tower or dome rests on the corners. In centuries past, it was not uncommon for overambitious crossing towers to collapse. Sacrist Alan of Walsingham's octagon, built between 1322 and 1328 after the collapse of Ely's nave crossing on 22 February 1322, is the "... greatest individual achievement of architectural genius at Ely Cathedral" according to architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner. A tower over the crossing may be called a lantern tower if it has openings through which light from outside can shine down to the crossing.
In Early Medieval churches, the crossing square was used as a module, or a unit of measurement. The nave and transept would have lengths that were a certain multiple of the length of the crossing square; the term is occasionally used for secular buildings of a cruciform plan, for instance The Crystal Palace in London
Baroque
The Baroque is a ornate and extravagant style of architecture, painting and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th until the mid-18th century. It preceded the Rococo and Neoclassical styles, it was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well. The Baroque style used contrast, exuberant detail, deep colour and surprise to achieve a sense of awe; the style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome spread to France, northern Italy and Portugal to Austria and southern Germany. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an more flamboyant style, called rocaille or Rococo, which appeared in France and central Europe until the mid to late 18th century; the English word baroque comes directly from the French, may have been adapted from the Portuguese term barroco, a flawed pearl. Both words are related to the Spanish term berruca; the term did not describe a style of music or art.
Prior to the 18th century, the French baroque and Portuguese barroco were terms related to jewelry, An example from 1531 uses the term to describe pearls in an inventory of Charles V's treasures. The word appears in a 1694 edition of Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française, which describes baroque as "only used for pearls that are imperfectly round." A 1728 Portuguese dictionary describes barroco as relating to a "coarse and uneven pearl."The French term for the artistic style may have had roots in the medieval Latin word baroco, a philosophical term, invented in the 13th century by scholastics to describe a complicated type of syllogism, or logical argument. In the 16th century the philosopher Michel de Montaigne associated the term'baroco' with "Bizarre and uselessly complicated." In the 18th century, the term was used to describe music, was not flattering. In an anonymous satirical review of the première of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie in October 1733, printed in the Mercure de France in May 1734, the critic wrote that the novelty in this opera was "du barocque", complaining that the music lacked coherent melody, was unsparing with dissonances changed key and meter, speedily ran through every compositional device.
In 1762, Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française wrote that the term could be used figuratively to describe something "irregular, bizarre or unequal."Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a musician and composer as well as philosopher, wrote in 1768 in the Encyclopédie: "Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, the movement limited, it appears that term comes from the word'baroco' used by logicians."In 1788, the term was defined by Quatremère de Quincy in the Encyclopédie Méthodique as "an architectural style, adorned and tormented". The terms "style baroque" and "musique baroque" appeared in Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française in 1835. By the mid-19th century, art critics and historians had adopted the term as a way to ridicule post-Renaissance art; this was the sense of the word as used in 1855 by the leading art historian Jacob Burkhardt, who wrote that baroque artists "despised and abused detail" because they lacked "respect for tradition."Alternatively, a derivation from the name of the Italian painter Federico Barocci has been suggested.
In 1888, the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin published the first serious academic work on the style, Renaissance und Barock, which described the differences between the painting and architecture of the Renaissance and the Baroque. The Baroque style of architecture was a result of doctrines adopted by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1545–63, in response to the Protestant Reformation; the first phase of the Counter-Reformation had imposed a severe, academic style on religious architecture, which had appealed to intellectuals but not the mass of churchgoers. The Council of Trent decided instead to appeal to a more popular audience, declared that the arts should communicate religious themes with direct and emotional involvement. Lutheran Baroque art developed as a confessional marker of identity, in response to the Great Iconoclasm of Calvinists. Baroque churches were designed with a large central space, where the worshippers could be close to the altar, with a dome or cupola high overhead, allowing light to illuminate the church below.
The dome was one of the central symbolic features of baroque architecture illustrating the union between the heavens and the earth, The inside of the cupola was lavishly decorated with paintings of angels and saints, with stucco statuettes of angels, giving the impression to those below of looking up at heaven. Another feature of baroque churches are the quadratura. Quadratura paintings of Atlantes below the cornices appear to be supporting the ceiling of the church. Unlike the painted ceilings of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, which combined different scenes, each with its own perspective, to be looked at one at a time, the Baroque ceiling paintings were created so the viewer on the floor of the church would see the entire ceiling in correct perspective, as if the figures were real; the interiors of baroque churches became more and more ornate in the High Baroque, an
Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
Baroque architecture
Baroque architecture is the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late 16th-century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion to express the triumph of the Catholic Church. It was characterized by new explorations of form and shadow, dramatic intensity. Common features of Baroque architecture included gigantism of proportions. Whereas the Renaissance drew on the wealth and power of the Italian courts and was a blend of secular and religious forces, the Baroque was at least, directly linked to the Counter-Reformation, a movement within the Catholic Church to reform itself in response to the Protestant Reformation. Baroque architecture and its embellishments were on the one hand more accessible to the emotions and on the other hand, a visible statement of the wealth and power of the Catholic Church; the new style manifested itself in particular in the context of the new religious orders, like the Theatines and the Jesuits who aimed to improve popular piety.
Lutheran Baroque art, such as the example of Dresden Frauenkirche, developed as a confessional marker of identity, in response to the Great Iconoclasm of Calvinists. The architecture of the High Roman Baroque can be assigned to the papal reigns of Urban VIII, Innocent X and Alexander VII, spanning from 1623 to 1667; the three principal architects of this period were the sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini and the painter Pietro da Cortona and each evolved his own distinctively individual architectural expression. Dissemination of Baroque architecture to the south of Italy resulted in regional variations such as Sicilian Baroque architecture or that of Naples and Lecce. To the north, the Theatine architect Camillo-Guarino Guarini, Bernardo Vittone and Sicilian born Filippo Juvarra contributed Baroque buildings to the city of Turin and the Piedmont region. A synthesis of Bernini and Cortona's architecture can be seen in the late Baroque architecture of northern Europe, which paved the way for the more decorative Rococo style.
By the middle of the 17th century, the Baroque style had found its secular expression in the form of grand palaces, first in France—with the Château de Maisons near Paris by François Mansart—and throughout Europe. During the 17th century, Baroque architecture spread through Europe and Latin America, where it was promoted by the Jesuits. Michelangelo's late Roman buildings St. Peter's Basilica, may be considered precursors to Baroque architecture, his pupil Giacomo della Porta continued this work in Rome in the façade of the Jesuit church Il Gesù, which leads directly to the most important church façade of the early Baroque, Santa Susanna, by Carlo Maderno. Distinctive features of Baroque architecture can include: in churches, broader naves and sometimes given oval forms fragmentary or deliberately incomplete architectural elements dramatic use of light. Colonialism required the development of centralized and powerful governments with Spain and France, the first to move in this direction. Colonialism brought in huge amounts of wealth, not only in the silver, extracted from the mines in Bolivia and elsewhere, but in the resultant trade in commodities, such as sugar and tobacco.
The need to control trade routes and slavery, which lay in the hands of the French during the 17th century, created an endless cycle of wars between the colonial powers: the French religious wars, the Thirty Years' War, Franco–Spanish War, the Franco-Dutch War, so on. The initial mismanagement of colonial wealth by the Spaniards bankrupted them in the 16th century, recovering only in the following century; this explains why the Baroque style, though enthusiastically developed throughout the Spanish Empire, was to a large extent, in Spain, an architecture of surfaces and façades, unlike in France and Austria, where we see the construction of numerous huge palaces and monasteries. In contrast to Spain, the French, under Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the minister of finance, had begun to industrialize their economy, thus, were able to become at least, the benefactors of the flow of wealth. While this was good for the building in
Cerasi Chapel
The Cerasi Chapel or Chapel of the Assumption is one of the side chapels in the left transept of the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. It contains significant paintings by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci, two of the most important masters of Baroque art, dating from 1600-1601. Before the present-day edifice another funerary chapel on the same spot was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, it was built by the Cardinal of Venice. Johann Burchard notes in his diary that the cardinal died on 11 August 1485. "His body was transferred to the city, given over for burial in a chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, which he had built for himself", states Burchard. This construction correlated to the general rebuilding of the basilica by Pope Sixtus IV which began in 1472; the Cardinal of Venice was an influential person in Italian politics. It seems an obvious choice that he built himself a chapel in the Pope's favourite church in a prominent position in the left transept.
The construction might have begun in 1476. The chapel was covered by a barrel vault with a depth equal to the 15th century arch of the papal chapel. According to the will of the patron, the sarcophagus, due to host his remains, was placed at the center of the edifice. Due to its particular placement and visibility the sarcophagus was decorated on all four sides; this arrangement was markedly different than the Florentine type wall tombs of the basilica. It was modelled after the tomb of Pope Sixtus IV by Pollaiolo or more after other 15th century sculptural works in the city of Siena; this sepulchral monument is the only remaining vestige of the demolished chapel. Now it is placed in the Costa Chapel in the right aisle; the bronze gisant is attributed to a Sienese sculptor, Giovanni di Stefano, a follower of Vecchietta, commissioned by the heirs of Cardinal Pietro Foscari and used a funerary mask for the modelling of the face. The patronage rights of the chapel were purchased on 8 July 1600 by Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi, Consistorial Advocate and Treasurer-General to Pope Clement VIII.
He bought the chapel from the Augustinian friars with the option to rebuild and adorn it "in the manner and form" he wanted to. The edifice was reconfigured by Carlo Maderno. In September Cerasi contracted Caravaggio to paint two panels for the side walls; the contract signed with Annibale Caracci for the altarpiece has not been preserved. The commissions went to the leading artists in Rome at the time. Caracci painted The Assumption of Mary while Caravaggio depicted the The Conversion of Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus and The Crucifixion of Saint Peter on the lateral walls. Cerasi's choice of the Assumption for the altar seems straightforward enough, while the other two paintings honoured the Apostles central to the foundation of the Catholic Church as well as popular Counter-Reformation themes of conversion and martyrdom; the precedent existed for this juxtaposition in the Cappella Paolina at the Apostolic Palace by Michelangelo. Saint Peter and Paul were the patrons of Rome and they had a strong connection with the papacy.
Because Tiberio Cerasi did not belong to the ranks of the Roman aristocracy and he made his career and fortune in the Roman Curia, it was important to emphasize his closeness to papal power and the Church of Rome. The first versions of the Caravaggio paintings were rejected by the patron and Caravaggio painted two canvasses instead of the cypress panels as it had been stipulated; the story of the rejection of the first versions was recorded by Giovanni Baglione in his 1642 Life of Caravaggio. Tiberio Cerasi was buried in the chapel. In his will he named the Fathers of the Hospital of the Madonna della Consolazione as his heirs with the responsibility to complete the unfinished chapel. Annibale's altarpiece was already complete at the time while Caravaggio was paid on 10 November 1601 for his work; the paintings were installed in the chapel by a woodworker named Bartolomeo in May 1605, the chapel was consecrated on 11 November 1606. The chapel was restored in 1899 by Antonio Cerasi, count of Monterado.
The oblong shaped chapel consists of a sail-vaulted anteroom and a narrower, barrel-vaulted chancel with the altar, lit by a lunette window on the back wall. The arched entrance is screened by a colourful marble balustrade; the focus of the architecture is the altar shaped as an aedicule of black and white marble with two Corinthian columns and a broken pediment. The Cerasi coats-of-arms is depicted in the center of the stained glass lunette window. Caravaggio's lit and foreshortened paintings are intended to be viewed from the side rather than straight-on, draw the eye to Carracci's frontally presented Assumption, so that the chapel is aesthetically united despite the different styles of the two artists. According to Steinberg the light on the Caravaggio paintings comes from the painted heaven on the vault of the anteroom, inhabited by the dove of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, Varriano claims that the "source" of the light seems to be the clerestory window across the transept; the chapel is decorated in exuberant Baroque style.
The frescos on the short barrel-vault of the chancel depict the Coronation of the Virgin and the visions of Sts Peter and Paul, Domine quo vadis and Saint Paul Transported to the Third Heaven, both set in rich gilded stucco frames. The frame of the central medaillon is held by four stucco putti; the intrados of the arch between the chancel and the anteroom is decorated with white-gold stucco panels with two putti holding a wreath in the central one. The stucco decoration on the pillar
Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls
The Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls known as St. Paul's Outside the Walls, is one of Rome's four ancient, major basilicas, along with the basilicas of St. John in the Lateran, St. Peter's, St. Mary Major; the basilica is within Italian territory and not the territory of the Vatican City State, but the Holy See owns the Basilica, Italy is obligated to recognize its full ownership and to concede to it "the immunity granted by International Law to the headquarters of the diplomatic agents of foreign States". James Michael Harvey was named Archpriest of the basilica in 2012; the basilica was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine I over the burial place of St. Paul, where it was said that, after the Apostle's execution, his followers erected a memorial, called a cella memoriae; this first basilica was consecrated by Pope Sylvester in 324. In 386, Emperor Theodosius I began erecting a much larger and more beautiful basilica with a nave and four aisles with a transept, it was consecrated around 402 by Pope Innocent I.
The work, including the mosaics, was not completed until Leo I's pontificate. In the 5th century it was larger than the Old St. Peter's Basilica; the Christian poet Prudentius, who saw it at the time of emperor Honorius, describes the splendours of the monument in a few expressive lines. Under Leo I, extensive repair work was carried out following the collapse of the roof on account of fire or lightening. In particular, the transept was presbytery installed; this was the first time that an altar was placed over the tomb of St. Paul, which remained untouched, but underground given Leo's newly elevated floor levels. Leo was responsible for fixing the triumphal arch and for restoring a fountain in the courtyard. Under Pope St. Gregory the Great the main altar and presbytery were extensively modified; the pavement in the transept was raised and a new altar was placed above the earlier altar erected by Leo I. The position was directly over St. Paul's sarcophagus. In that period there were two monasteries near the basilica: St. Aristus's for men and St. Stefano's for women.
Masses were celebrated by a special body of clerics instituted by Pope Simplicius. Over time the monasteries and the basilica's clergy declined; as it lay outside the Aurelian Walls, the basilica was damaged in the 9th century during a Saracen raid. Pope John VIII fortified the basilica, the monastery, the dwellings of the peasantry, forming the town of Johannispolis which existed until 1348, when an earthquake destroyed it. In 937, when Saint Odo of Cluny came to Rome, Alberic II of Spoleto, Patrician of Rome, entrusted the monastery and basilica to his congregation and Odo placed Balduino of Monte Cassino in charge. Pope Gregory VII was abbot of the monastery and in his time Pantaleone, a rich merchant of Amalfi who lived in Constantinople, presented the bronze doors of the basilica maior, which were executed by Constantinopolitan artists. Pope Martin V entrusted it to the monks of the Congregation of Monte Cassino, it was made an abbey nullius. The abbot's jurisdiction extended over the districts of Civitella San Paolo and Nazzano, all of which formed parishes.
The graceful cloister of the monastery was erected between 1220 and 1241. From 1215 until 1964 it was the seat of the Latin Patriarch of Alexandria. On 15 July 1823, a workman repairing the lead of the roof started a fire that led to the near total destruction of this basilica, alone among all the churches of Rome, had preserved much of its original character for 1435 years. Pope Leo XII issued, it was re-opened in 1840, reconsecrated in 1855 in the presence of Pope Pius IX and fifty cardinals. The basilica was reconstructed identically to what it had been before, utilizing all the elements which had survived the fire; the complete decoration and reconstruction, in charge of Luigi Poletti, took longer and many countries made their contributions. Muhammad Ali Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt sent pillars of alabaster, the Emperor of Russia the precious malachite and lapis lazuli of the tabernacle; the work on the principal façade, looking toward the Tiber, was completed by the Italian Government, which declared the church a national monument.
On 23 April 1891 the explosion of the gunpowder magazine at Forte Portuense destroyed the stained glass windows. On 31 May 2005 Pope Benedict XVI ordered the basilica to come under the control of an archpriest and he named Archbishop Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo as its first archpriest; the covered portico that precedes the façade is a Neo-classicist addition of the 19th-century reconstruction. On the right is the Holy Door, opened only during the Jubilees; the new basilica has maintained the original structure with four side aisles. It is 131.66 metres long, 65 metres -wide, 29.70 metres -high, the second largest in Rome. The nave's 80 columns and its wood and stucco-decorated ceiling are from the 19th century. All that remains of the ancient basilica are the interior portion of the apse with the triumphal arch; the mosaics of the apse were damaged in the 1823 fire. The 5th-century mosaics of the triumphal arch are original: an inscription in the lower section attest they were done a
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