Pope Paul III
Pope Paul III, born Alessandro Farnese, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 13 October 1534 to his death in 1549. He came to the papal throne in an era following the sack of Rome in 1527 and rife with uncertainties in the Catholic Church following the Protestant Reformation. During his pontificate, in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, new Catholic religious orders and societies, such as the Jesuits, the Barnabites, the Congregation of the Oratory, attracted a popular following, he convened the Council of Trent in 1545. He was a significant patron of the arts and employed nepotism to advance the power and fortunes of his family, it is to Pope Paul III. Born in 1468 at Canino, Alessandro Farnese was the oldest son of Pier Luigi I Farnese, Signore di Montalto and his wife Giovanna Caetani, a member of the Caetani family which had produced Pope Boniface VIII; the Farnese family had prospered over the centuries but it was Alessandro’s ascendency to the papacy and his dedication to family interests which brought about the most significant increase in the family’s wealth and power.
Alessandro's humanist education was at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici. Trained as an apostolic notary, he joined the Roman Curia in 1491 and in 1493 Pope Alexander VI appointed him Cardinal-Deacon of Santi Cosma e Damiano. Farnese’s sister, Giulia was reputedly a mistress of Alexander VI and might have been instrumental in securing this appointment for her brother. For this reason, he was sometimes mockingly referred to as the "Borgia brother-in-law," just as Giulia was mocked as "the Bride of Christ." More disparagingly he was referred to as "Cardinal Fregnese". As Bishop of Parma, he came under the influence of his vicar-general, Bartolomeo Guidiccioni; this led to the future pope breaking off the relationship with his mistress and committing himself to reform in his Parma diocese. Under Pope Clement VII he became Cardinal Bishop of Ostia and Dean of the College of Cardinals, on the death of Clement VII in 1534, was elected as Pope Paul III; as a young cleric, Alessandro lived a notably dissolute life, taking for himself a mistress and having three sons and two daughters with her.
By Silvia Ruffini, he fathered Pier Luigi Farnese. The elevation to the cardinalate of his grandsons, Alessandro Farnese, aged fourteen, Guido Ascanio Sforza, aged sixteen, displeased the reform party and drew a protest from the emperor, but this was forgiven when, shortly after, he introduced into the Sacred College Reginald Pole, Gasparo Contarini, Jacopo Sadoleto, Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, who became Pope Paul IV; the fourth pope during the period of the Protestant Reformation, Paul III became the first to take active reform measures in response to Protestantism. Soon after his elevation, 2 June 1536, Paul III summoned a general council to meet at Mantua in the following May. Paul III first deferred for a year and discarded the whole project. In 1536, Paul III invited nine eminent prelates, distinguished by learning and piety alike, to act in committee and to report on the reformation and rebuilding of the Church. In 1537 they turned in their celebrated Consilium de emendenda ecclesia, exposing gross abuses in the Curia, in the church administration and public worship.
This report was printed not only at Strasbourg and elsewhere. But to the Protestants it seemed far from thorough, yet the Pope was in earnest. He perceived that Emperor Charles V would not rest until the problems were grappled with in earnest, a council was an unequivocal procedure that should leave no room for doubt of his own readiness to make changes, yet it is clear that the Concilium bore no fruit in the actual situation, that in Rome no results followed from the committee's recommendations. As a consequence of the extensive campaign against "idolatry" in England, culminating with the dismantling of the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury, the Pope excommunicated Henry VIII on 17 December 1538 and issued an interdict. On the other hand, serious political complications resulted. In order to vest his grandson Ottavio Farnese with the dukedom of Camerino, Paul forcibly wrested the same from the duke of Urbino, he incurred virtual war with his own subjects and vassals by the imposition of burdensome taxes.
Perugia, renouncing its obedience, was besieged by Paul's son, Pier Luigi, forfeited its freedom on its surrender. The burghers of Colonna were duly vanquished, Ascanio was banished. After this the time seemed ripe for annihilating heresy. In 1540, the Church recognized the new society forming about Ignatius of Loyola, which became the Society of Jesus; the second visible stage in the process becomes marked by the institution, or reorganization, in 1542, of the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. On another side, the Emperor was insisting that Rome should forward his designs towards a peaceable recovery of the German Protestants. Accordingly, the Pope despatched Giovanni Morone (not yet a cardi
Corinthian order
The Corinthian order is the last developed of the three principal classical orders of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order, the earliest, followed by the Ionic order; when classical architecture was revived during the Renaissance, two more orders were added to the canon, the Tuscan order and the Composite order. The Corinthian, with its offshoot the Composite, is the most ornate of the orders; this architectural style is characterized by slender fluted columns and elaborate capitals decorated with acanthus leaves and scrolls. There are many variations; the name Corinthian is derived from the ancient Greek city of Corinth, although the style had its own model in Roman practice, following precedents set by the Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus. It was employed in southern Gaul at the Maison Carrée, Nîmes and at the comparable podium temple at Vienne. Other prime examples noted by Mark Wilson Jones are the lower order of the Basilica Ulpia and the arch at Ancona the "column of Phocas", the "Temple of Bacchus" at Baalbek.
The Corinthian order is named for the Greek city-state of Corinth, to which it was connected in the period. However, according to the architectural historian Vitruvius, the column was created by the sculptor Callimachus an Athenian, who drew acanthus leaves growing around a votive basket, its earliest use can be traced back to the Late Classical Period. The earliest Corinthian capital was found in Bassae, dated at 427 BC. Proportion is a defining characteristic of the Corinthian order: the "coherent integration of dimensions and ratios in accordance with the principles of symmetria" are noted by Mark Wilson Jones, who finds that the ratio of total column height to column-shaft height is in a 6:5 ratio, so that, the full height of column with capital is a multiple of 6 Roman feet while the column height itself is a multiple of 5. In its proportions, the Corinthian column is similar to the Ionic column, though it is more slender, stands apart by its distinctive carved capital; the abacus upon the capital has concave sides to conform to the outscrolling corners of the capital, it may have a rosette at the center of each side.
Corinthian columns were erected on the top level of the Roman Colosseum, holding up the least weight, having the slenderest ratio of thickness to height. Their height to width ratio is about 10:1. One variant is the Tivoli Order, found at the Temple of Tivoli; the Tivoli Order's Corintinan Capital has two rows of Acanthus and its abacus is decorated with oversize fleuron in the form of hibiscus flowers with pronounced spiral pistils. The column flutes have flat tops; the frieze exhibits fruit swag suspended between bucrania. Above each swag is a rosette; the cornice does not have modillions. Indo-Corinthian capitals are capitals crowning columns or pilasters, which can be found in the northwestern Indian subcontinent, combine Hellenistic and Indian elements; these capitals are dated to the 1st centuries of our era, constitute important elements of Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara. The classical design was adapted taking a more elongated form, sometimes being combined with scrolls within the context of Buddhist stupas and temples.
Indo-Corinthian capitals incorporated figures of the Buddha or Bodhisattvas as central figures surrounded, in the shade, of the luxurious foliage of Corinthian designs. During the first flush of the Italian Renaissance, the Florentine architectural theorist Francesco di Giorgio expressed the human analogies that writers who followed Vitruvius associated with the human form, in squared drawings he made of the Corinthian capital overlaid with human heads, to show the proportions common to both; the Corinthian architrave is divided in two or three sections, which may be equal, or may bear interesting proportional relationships, to one with another. Above the plain, unadorned architrave lies the frieze, which may be richly carved with a continuous design or left plain, as at the U. S. Capitol extension. At the Capitol the proportions of architrave to frieze are 1:1. Above that, the profiles of the cornice moldings are like those of the Ionic order. If the cornice is deep, it may be supported by brackets or modillions, which are ornamental brackets used in a series under a cornice.
The Corinthian column is always fluted, the flutes of a Corinthian column may be enriched. They may be filleted, with rods nestled within the hollow flutes, or stop-fluted, with the rods rising a third of the way, to where the entasis begins. In French, these are called chandelles and sometimes terminate in carved wisps of flame, or with bellflowers. Alternatively, beading or chains of husks may take the place of the fillets in the fluting, Corinthian being the most flexible of the orders, with more opportunities for variation. Elaborating upon an offhand remark when Vitruvius accounted for the origin of its acanthus capital, it became a commonplace to identify the Corinthian column with the slender figure of a young girl. Sir William Chambers expressed the conventional comparison with the Doric order: The proportions of the orders were by the ancients formed on those of the human body, it could n
Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence, or Aix, is a city and commune in Southern France, about 30 km north of Marseille. A former capital of Provence, it is in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, of which it is a subprefecture; the population of Aix-en-Provence numbers 143,000. Its inhabitants are called Aixois or, less Aquisextains. Aix was founded in 123 BC by the Roman consul Sextius Calvinus, who gave his name to its springs, following the destruction of the nearby Gallic oppidum at Entremont. In 102 BC its vicinity was the scene of the Battle of Aquae Sextiae, where the Romans under Gaius Marius defeated the Cimbri and Teutones, with mass suicides among the captured women, which passed into Roman legends of Germanic heroism. In the 4th century AD it became the metropolis of Narbonensis Secunda, it was occupied by the Visigoths in 477. In the succeeding century, the town was plundered by the Franks and Lombards, was occupied by the Saracens in 731 and by Charles Martel in 737.
Aix, which during the Middle Ages was the capital of Provence, did not reach its zenith until after the 12th century, under the houses of Barcelona/Aragon and Anjou, it became an artistic centre and seat of learning. Aix passed to the crown of France with the rest of Provence in 1487, in 1501 Louis XII established there the parliament of Provence, which existed until 1789. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the town was the seat of the Intendance of Provence. Current archeological excavations in the Ville des Tours, a medieval suburb of Aix, have unearthed the remains of a Roman amphitheatre. A deposit of fossil bones from the Upper Continental Miocene gave rise to a Christian dragon legend. Aix-en-Provence is situated in the south of France, in a plain overlooking the Arc river, about a mile from the right bank of the river; the city slopes from north to south and the Montagne Sainte-Victoire can be seen to the east. Aix's position in the south of France gives it a warm climate, though more extreme than Marseille due to the inland location.
It has an average January temperature of 5 °C and a July average of 23 °C. It has an average of only 91 days of rain. While it is protected from the Mistral, Aix still experiences the cooler and gusty conditions it brings. Unlike most of France which has an oceanic climate, Aix-en-Provence has a Mediterranean climate; the Cours Mirabeau is a wide thoroughfare, planted with double rows of plane trees, bordered by fine houses and decorated by fountains. It follows the line of the old city wall, divides the town into two sections; the new town extends to the west. Situated on this avenue, lined on one side with banks and on the other with cafés, is the Deux Garçons, the most famous brasserie in Aix. Built in 1792, it was frequented by the likes of Émile Zola and Ernest Hemingway; the Cathedral of the Holy Saviour is situated to the north in the medieval part of Aix. Built on the site of a former Roman forum and an adjacent basilica, it contains a mixture of all styles from the 5th to the 17th century, including a richly decorated portal in the Gothic style with doors elaborately carved in walnut.
The interior contains 16th-century tapestries, a 15th-century triptych, depicting King René and his wife on the side panels, as well as a Merovingian baptistery, its Renaissance dome supported by original Roman columns. The archbishop's palace and a Romanesque cloister adjoin the cathedral on its south side; the Archbishopric of Aix is now shared with Arles. Among its other public institutions, Aix has the second most important Appeal Court outside of Paris, located near the site of the former Palace of the Counts of Provence; the Hôtel de Ville, a building in the classical style of the middle of the 17th century, looks onto a picturesque square. It contains tapestries. At its side rises a handsome clock-tower erected in 1510. On the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville is the former Corn Exchange; this ornately decorated 18th-century building was designed by the Vallon brothers. Nearby are the remarkable thermal springs, containing lime and carbonic acid, that first drew the Romans to Aix and gave it the name Aquae Sextiae.
A spa was built in 1705 near the remains of the ancient Roman baths of Sextius. South of the Cours Mirabeau is the Quartier Mazarin; this residential district was constructed for the gentry of Aix by Archbishop Michele Mazzarino brother of Cardinal Jules Mazarin in the last half of the 17th century and contains several notable hôtels particuliers. The 13th-century church of Saint-Jean-de-Malte contains valuable pictures and a restored organ. Next to it is the Musée Granet, devoted to European sculpture. Aix is referred to as the city of a thousand fountains. Among the most notable are the 17th-century Fontaine des Quatre Dauphins in the Quartier Mazarin, designed by Jean-Claude Rambot, three of the fountains down the central Cours Mirabeau: At the top, a 19th-century fountain depicts the "good king" René holding the Muscat grapes that he introduced to Provence in the 15th century.
National Archaeological Museum, Naples
The National Archaeological Museum of Naples is an important Italian archaeological museum for ancient Roman remains. Its collection includes works from Greek and Renaissance times, Roman artifacts from nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum, it was the Real Museo Borbonico. The building was built as a cavalry barracks in 1585. From 1616 to 1777 it was the seat of the University of Naples. During the 19th century, after it became museum, it suffered many changes to the main structure; the museum hosts extensive collections of Roman antiquities. Their core is from the Farnese Collection, which includes a collection of engraved gems and the Farnese Marbles. Among the notable works found in the museum are the Herculaneum papyri, carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, found after 1752 in Villa of the Papyri; the greater part of the museum's classical sculpture collection comes from the Farnese Marbles, important since they include Roman copies of classical Greek sculpture, which are in many cases the only surviving indications of what the lost works by ancient Greek sculptors such as Calamis and Nesiotes looked like.
Many of these works the larger ones, have been moved to the Museo di Capodimonte for display in recent years. The Farnese Hercules, which fixed the image of Hercules in the European imagination; the Farnese Atlas is the oldest extant depiction of Atlas from Greek mythology, the oldest view of the Western constellations based upon the star catalog of Hipparchus The Farnese Bull considered the largest single sculpture recovered from antiquity. The group Harmodius and Aristogeiton, a Roman copy of a bronze work that once stood in the Agora of Athens The Venus Kallipygos The Farnese Artemis, again a Roman copy of a Greek original a collection of busts of Roman emperors another set of Roman sculptures that once stood in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. A major collection of ancient Roman bronzes from the Villa of the Papyri is housed at the museum; these include the Seated Hermes, a sprawling Drunken Satyr, a bust of Thespis, another variously identified as Seneca or Hesiod, a pair of exceptionally lively runners.
The museum's Mosaic Collection includes a number of important mosaics recovered from the ruins of Pompeii and the other Vesuvian cities. This includes the Alexander Mosaic, dating from circa 100 BC from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, it depicts a battle between the armies of Darius III of Persia. Another mosaic found is that of the gladiatorial fighter depicted in a mosaic found from the Villa of the Figured Capitals in Pompeii. With 2,500 objects, the museum has one of the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts in Italy after the Turin and Bologna ones, it is made up of works from two private collections, assembled by Cardinal Stefano Borgia in the second half of the 18th century, Picchianti in the first years of the 19th. In the recent rearrangement of the galleries the two nuclei have been exhibited separately, while in the connecting room other items are on display, including Egyptian and "pseudo-Egyptian" artefacts from Pompeii and other Campanian sites. In its new layout the collection provides both an important record of Egyptian civilization from the Old Kingdom up to the Ptolemaic-Roman era.
The Secret Cabinet or Secret Room is the name the Bourbon Monarchy gave the private rooms in which they held their extensive collection of erotic or sexual items deriving from excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Access was known morals; the rooms were called Cabinets of matters reserved or obscene or pornographic. After the revolution of 1848, the government of the monarchy proposed the destruction of objects, fearful of the implications of their ownership, which would tarnish the monarchy with lasciviousness; the director of the Royal Bourbon Museum instead had access to the collection terminated, the entrance door was provided with three different locks, whose keys were held by the Director of the Museum, the Museum Controller, the Palace Butler. The highlight of the censorship occurred in 1851 when nude Venus statues were locked up, the entrance walled up in the hope that the collection would vanish from memory. In September 1860, when the forces of Garibaldi occupied Naples, he ordered that the collection be made available for the general public to view.
Since the Royal Butler was no longer available, they broke into the collection. Limiting viewership and censorship have always been part of the history of the collection. Censorship was restored during the era of the Kingdom of Italy, peaked during the Fascist period, when visitors to the rooms needed the permission of the Minister of National Education in Rome. Censorship persisted in the postwar period up to 1967, abating only after 1971 when the Ministry was given the new rules to regulate requests for visits and access to the section. Rebuilt a few years ago with all of the new criteria, the collection was opened to the public in April 2000. Visitors under the age of 14 can tour the exhibit only with an adult; the Placentarius, the small bronze statue represents a distinctly ithyphallic old nude man who, on the palm of his hand, holds a little silver tray. Official website
High Renaissance
In art history, the High Renaissance is a short period of the most exceptional artistic production in the Italian states Rome, capital of the Papal States, in Florence, during the Italian Renaissance. Most art historians state that the High Renaissance started around 1495 or 1500 and ended in 1520 with the death of Raphael, although some say the High Renaissance ended about 1525, or in 1527 with the Sack of Rome by the army of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, or about 1530; the best-known exponents of painting and architecture of the High Renaissance include Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Bramante. In recent years, the use of the term has been criticized by some academic art historians for oversimplifying artistic developments, ignoring historical context, focusing only on a few iconic works; the term "High Renaissance" was first used by Jacob Burckhardt in German in 1855 and has its origins in the "High Style" of painting and sculpture of the time period around the early 16th century described by Johann Joachim Winckelmann in 1764.
Extending the general rubric of Renaissance culture, the visual arts of the High Renaissance were marked by a renewed emphasis upon the classical tradition, the expansion of networks of patronage, a gradual attenuation of figural forms into the style termed Mannerism. Alexander Raunch in "The Art of the High Renaissance and Mannerism in Rome and Central Italy", 2007, states the High Renaissance began in 1490, while Marilyn Stokstad in Art History, 2008, states it began in the 1490s. Frederick Hartt states that da Vinci's the Last Supper, the painting of which began in 1495 and concluded in 1498, makes a complete break with the Early Renaissance and created the world in which Michelangelo and Raphael worked while Christoph Luitpold Frommel, in his 2012 article "Bramante and the Origins of the High Renaissance," states the Last Supper is the first High Renaissance work but adds that the peak period of the High Renaissance was 1505 to 1513. David Piper in The Illustrated History of Art, 1991 cites the Last Supper writing the work announced the High Renaissance and was one of the most influential paintings of the High Renaissance, but contradictorily states that the High Renaissance began just after 1500.
Burchkardt stated the High Renaissance started at the close of the 15th century, while Franz Kugler, who wrote the first "modern" survey text, Handbook of Art History in 1841, Hugh Honour and John Fleming in The Visual Arts: A History, 2009, state the High Renaissance started at the beginning of the 16th century. Another seminal work of art, created in the 1495-1500 timeframe was Michelangelo's the Pietà, housed in St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City, executed in 1498-99. In contrast to most of the other art historians, Manfred Wurdram, in Masterpieces of Western Art, 2007 states that the dawn of the High Renaissance was heralded by da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi of 1481, for which only the underpainting was completed; as far as the end of the High Renaissance is concerned Hartt, Piper and Winkelman all state that the High Renaissance ended in 1520 with the death of Raphael. Honour and Fleming stated the High Renaissance was the first quarter of the 16th century meaning it would have ended in 1525.
By contrast, Luigi Lanzi, in his History of Italian Painting, 1795–96, stated it ended with the Sack of Rome in 1527. When several artists were killed and many other dispersed from Rome, Stokstad agrees. Raunch asserts. Hartt adds that 1520 to 1530 was a transition period between Mannerism. High Renaissance style in architecture conventionally begins with Donato Bramante, whose Tempietto at S. Pietro in Montorio at Rome was begun in 1510; the Tempietto, signifies a full-scale revival of ancient Roman commemorative architecture. David Watkin writes that the Tempietto, like Raphael's works in the Vatican, "is an attempt at reconciling Christian and humanist ideals"; the High Renaissance of painting was the culmination of the varied means of expression and various advances in painting technique, such as linear perspective, the realistic depiction of both physical and psychological features, the manipulation of light and darkness, including tone contrast and chiaroscuro, in a single unifying style which expressed total compositional order and harmony.
In particular, the individual parts of the painting had a complex but balanced and well-knit relationship to the whole. Painting of the High Renaissance is considered to be the absolute zenith of western painting and achieved the balancing and reconciliation, in harmony, of contradictory and mutually exclusive artistic positions, such as real versus ideal, movement versus rest, freedom versus law, space versus plane, line versus colour; the High Renaissance was traditionally viewed as a great explosion of creative genius, following a model of art history first proposed by the Florentine Giorgio Vasari. The paintings in the Vatican by Michelangelo and Raphael are said by some scholars such as Stephen Freedberg to represent the culmination of High Renaissance style in painting, because of the ambitious scale of these works, coupled with the complexity of their composition observed human figures, pointed iconographic and decorative references to classical antiquity, can be viewed as emblematic of the High Renaissance.
Minor painters of the period, such as Fra Bartolomeo and Mariotto Albertinelli, produced works that are still lauded for the harmony of their design and
St. Peter's Basilica
The Papal Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican, or St. Peter's Basilica, is an Italian Renaissance church in Vatican City, the papal enclave within the city of Rome. Designed principally by Donato Bramante, Carlo Maderno and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, St. Peter's is the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture and the largest church in the world. While it is neither the mother church of the Catholic Church nor the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome, St. Peter's is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic shrines, it has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world" and as "the greatest of all churches of Christendom". Catholic tradition holds that the Basilica is the burial site of Saint Peter, chief among Jesus's Apostles and the first Bishop of Rome. Saint Peter's tomb is directly below the high altar of the Basilica. For this reason, many Popes have been interred at St. Peter's since the Early Christian period, there has been a church on this site since the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great.
Construction of the present basilica, which would replace Old St. Peter's Basilica from the 4th century AD, began on 18 April 1506 and was completed on 18 November 1626. St. Peter's is famous for its liturgical functions; the Pope presides at a number of liturgies throughout the year, drawing audiences of 15,000 to over 80,000 people, either within the Basilica or the adjoining St. Peter's Square. St. Peter's has many historical associations, with the Early Christian Church, the Papacy, the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-reformation and numerous artists Michelangelo; as a work of architecture, it is regarded as the greatest building of its age. St. Peter's is one of the four churches in the world that hold the rank of Major Basilica, all four of which are in Rome. Contrary to popular misconception, it is not a cathedral. St. Peter's is a church built in the Renaissance style located in the Vatican City west of the River Tiber and near the Janiculum Hill and Hadrian's Mausoleum, its central dome dominates the skyline of Rome.
The basilica is approached via St. Peter's Square, a forecourt in two sections, both surrounded by tall colonnades; the first space is the second trapezoid. The façade of the basilica, with a giant order of columns, stretches across the end of the square and is approached by steps on which stand two 5.55 metres statues of the 1st-century apostles to Rome, Saints Peter and Paul. The basilica is cruciform in shape, with an elongated nave in the Latin cross form but the early designs were for a centrally planned structure and this is still in evidence in the architecture; the central space is dominated both externally and internally by one of the largest domes in the world. The entrance is through entrance hall, which stretches across the building. One of the decorated bronze doors leading from the narthex is the Holy Door, only opened during jubilees; the interior is of vast dimensions. One author wrote: "Only does it dawn upon us – as we watch people draw near to this or that monument, strangely they appear to shrink.
This in its turn overwhelms us."The nave which leads to the central dome is in three bays, with piers supporting a barrel-vault, the highest of any church. The nave is framed by wide aisles. There are chapels surrounding the dome. Moving around the basilica in a clockwise direction they are: The Baptistery, the Chapel of the Presentation of the Virgin, the larger Choir Chapel, the altar of the Transfiguration, the Clementine Chapel with the altar of Saint Gregory, the Sacristy Entrance, the Altar of the Lie, the left transept with altars to the Crucifixion of Saint Peter, Saint Joseph and Saint Thomas, the altar of the Sacred Heart, the Chapel of the Madonna of Column, the altar of Saint Peter and the Paralytic, the apse with the Chair of Saint Peter, the altar of Saint Peter raising Tabitha, the altar of St. Petronilla, the altar of the Archangel Michael, the altar of the Navicella, the right transept with altars of Saint Erasmus, Saints Processo and Martiniano, Saint Wenceslas, the altar of St. Jerome, the altar of Saint Basil, the Gregorian Chapel with the altar of the Madonna of Succour, the larger Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, the Chapel of Saint Sebastian and the Chapel of the Pietà.
At the heart of the basilica, beneath the high altar, is the Confessio or Chapel of the Confession, in reference to the confession of faith by St. Peter, which led to his martyrdom. Two curving marble staircases lead to this underground chapel at the level of the Constantinian church and above the purported burial place of Saint Peter; the entire interior of St. Peter's is lavishly decorated with marble, architectural sculpture and gilding; the basilica contains a large number of tombs of popes and other notable people, many of which are considered outstanding artworks. There are a number of sculptures in niches and chapels, including Michelangelo's Pietà; the central feature is a baldachin, or canopy over the Papal Altar, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The apse culminates in a sculptural ensemble by Bernini, containing the symbolic Chair of Saint Peter. One observer wrote: "St Peter's Basilica is the reason why Rome is still the center of the civilized world. For religious and architectural reasons it by itself justifies a journey to Rome, its interior offers a palimpsest of artistic styles at the
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint and compression we are objecting to the classicism of classic art. A violent emphasis or a sudden acceleration of rhythmic movement would have destroyed those qualities of balance and completeness through which it retained until the present century its position of authority in the restricted repertoire of visual images." Classicism, as Clark noted, implies a canon of accepted ideal forms, whether in the Western canon that he was examining in The Nude, or the literary Chinese classics or Chinese art, where the revival of classic styles is a recurring feature. Classicism is a force, present in post-medieval European and European influenced traditions. Classicism is a specific genre of philosophy, expressing itself in literature, architecture and music, which has Ancient Greek and Roman sources and an emphasis on society.
It was expressed in the Neoclassicism of the Age of Enlightenment. Classicism is a recurrent tendency in the Late Antique period, had a major revival in Carolingian and Ottonian art. There was another, more durable revival in the Italian renaissance when the fall of Byzantium and rising trade with the Islamic cultures brought a flood of knowledge about, from, the antiquity of Europe; until that time, the identification with antiquity had been seen as a continuous history of Christendom from the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine I. Renaissance classicism introduced a host of elements into European culture, including the application of mathematics and empiricism into art, humanism and depictive realism, formalism, it introduced Polytheism, or "paganism", the juxtaposition of ancient and modern. The classicism of the Renaissance led to, gave way to, a different sense of what was "classical" in the 16th and 17th centuries. In this period, classicism took on more overtly structural overtones of orderliness, the use of geometry and grids, the importance of rigorous discipline and pedagogy, as well as the formation of schools of art and music.
The court of Louis XIV was seen as the center of this form of classicism, with its references to the gods of Olympus as a symbolic prop for absolutism, its adherence to axiomatic and deductive reasoning, its love of order and predictability. This period sought the revival of classical art forms, including Greek music. Opera, in its modern European form, had its roots in attempts to recreate the combination of singing and dancing with theatre thought to be the Greek norm. Examples of this appeal to classicism included Dante and Shakespeare in poetry and theatre. Tudor drama, in particular, modeled itself after classical ideals and divided works into Tragedy and Comedy. Studying Ancient Greek became regarded as essential for a well-rounded education in the liberal arts; the Renaissance explicitly returned to architectural models and techniques associated with Greek and Roman antiquity, including the golden rectangle as a key proportion for buildings, the classical orders of columns, as well as a host of ornament and detail associated with Greek and Roman architecture.
They began reviving plastic arts such as bronze casting for sculpture, used the classical naturalism as the foundation of drawing and sculpture. The Age of Enlightenment identified itself with a vision of antiquity which, while continuous with the classicism of the previous century, was shaken by the physics of Sir Isaac Newton, the improvements in machinery and measurement, a sense of liberation which they saw as being present in the Greek civilization in its struggles against the Persian Empire; the ornate and complexly integrated forms of the baroque were to give way to a series of movements that regarded themselves expressly as "classical" or "neo-classical", or would be labelled as such. For example, the painting of Jacques-Louis David was seen as an attempt to return to formal balance, clarity and vigor in art; the 19th century saw the classical age as being the precursor of academicism, including such movements as uniformitarianism in the sciences, the creation of rigorous categories in artistic fields.
Various movements of the romantic period saw themselves as classical revolts against a prevailing trend of emotionalism and irregularity, for example the Pre-Raphaelites. By this point, classicism was old enough; the 19th century continued or extended many classical programs in the sciences, most notably the Newtonian program to account for the movement of energy between bodies by means of exchange of mechanical and thermal energy. The 20th century saw a number of changes in the sciences. Classicism was used both by those who rejected, or saw as temporary, transfigurations in the political and social world and by those who embraced the changes as a means to overthrow the perceived weight of the 19th century. Thus, both pre-20th century disciplines were labelled "classical" and modern movements in art which saw themselves as aligned with light, sparseness of texture, formal coherence. In the present day philosophy classicism is use
