The Patriarchal Basilica of St. Mary Major reigns as an authentic jewel in the crown of Roman churches. Its beautiful treasures are of inestimable value, and represent the Church's role as the cradle of Christian artistic civilization in Rome. For nearly sixteen centuries, St. Mary Major has held its position as a Marian shrine par excellence and has been a magnet for pilgrims from all over the world who have come to the Eternal City to experience the beauty, grandeur and holiness of the basilica.  One of the Four Basilica's of Rome.

SECRETS AND MYSTERIES IN ROME. ALTERNATIVE ITINERARIES - PART 2

 

 

SECRETS AND MYSTERIES IN ROME. ALTERNATIVE ITINERARIES - PART 2

SAINT YVES AT THE SAPIENZA

One of Borromini's masterpieces. Pope Urban VIII Barberini, asked him in 1632 to complete the Sapienza palace, the seat of the university and today... housing the National Archives, with a church dedicated to Saint Yves.

The church, one of the most elegant in Rome, has a wealth of symbolic elements starting from its triangular shape, built on the seal of Solomon which together with parts of the circle forms the figure of a bee. The interior of the Church, with its diffuse whiteness, is regarded as one of the finest expressions of the Roman Baroque.

Borromini was forced to adapt his design to the already existing palace. He choose a plan resembling a star of David, and merged the facade of the church with the courtyard of the palace. The dome, with its corkscrew lantern, is remarkable in its novelty. The complex rhythms of the interior have a dazzling geometry to them. It is a rational architecture- intricate to view, but on paper the overlap of a circle on two superimposed equilateral triangles creates a basis for a hexagonal array of chapels and altar in a centralized church. The undulations, both concave and convex of the interiors, create a jarring yet stunning appeal. The decoration is a mixture of novel organic (six-winged cherubic heads) and geometric (stars). Rising along the base of three of the dome's pillars are the symbol of the papal Chigi family, the "six mountain beneath a star".

The main artwork of the interior is the altarpiece by Pietro da Cortona, portraying St. Yves.

SECRETS AND MISTERY IN ROME. ATERNATIVE ITINEARIES - PART 1

SECRETS AND MISTERY IN ROME. ATERNATIVE ITINEARIES - PART 1

THE BASILICA OF ST. CLEMENTE

One of the very oldest in Rome, it was built towards the end of the 4th century AD and was dedicated to St. Clement, the third Pope after St. Peter.... The interior ratains a medieval aspect, with 2 aisles and a central nave, terminating in three apses, ancient columns with ionic capitals and a Cosmateque pavement. In the central apse a marvellous mosaic is preserved, depicting the crucified Christ between the Virgin and St John the Evangelist.

From the sacristy there is the access to the lower palaeo-Christian basilica, built at the end of the 4th century AD.
In the subsoil it is possible to approach mithraeum, built over the remains of 2nd-century houses and composed by 3 rooms. The first 2act as a vestibule and a Mithraic school. From the vestibule can be seen the room for worship properly so called, where the mystical banquet for those initiated into the cult of Mithras was served.
In the centre there is a marble altar decorated on all four sides with reliefs depicting the god Mithras slaying a bull, two torchbearers, cautes and Catopates, symbolizing sunrise and sunset, and a serpent. The third one is the mithraeum itself in the shape of a cavern, the typical place of the Mithraic religion, with Mithras sacrificing the bull.

TINTORETTO AT "PALAZZO ESPOSIZIONI"

JACOPO ROBUSTI (or CANAL), better known as TINTORETTO (1519-1594), is the only key Italian 16th century painter not to have had a major monographic exhibition devoted to his work to date. If we ignore the thematic exhibition of his portraits held in Venice in 1994, the last exhibition of the great Venetian master's work was held in 1937, due among other reasons to the sheer physical impossibility of shifting the large canvases that he painted in Venice
The exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale is part of a broader programme designed to explore the work of those artists who have helped to make the story of art in our country so unique and so grandiose, ranging from Botticelli to Antonello da Messina, from Bellini to Caravaggio and, more recently, to Lorenzo Lotto and Filippino Lippi.
This exhibition, focusing on the three main themes that distinguish Tintoretto's work: religion, mythology and portraiture, is strictly monographic and will be divided into sections comprising a handful of carefully selected and unquestioned masterpieces, beginning and ending with his two celebrated self-portraits of himself as a young man, from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and as an old man, from the Louvre. Even though he was in competition with Titian, his contemporaries yet recognized his "utterly exquisite eye in portraiture", and some of his most famous portraits from leading international collections will be on display here in Rome.Also on display will be the spectacular Miracle of the Slave painted in 1548 for the Scuola Grande di San Marco, a work that allowed him to grab the limelight as one of leading lights of the Venetian art scene, while the exhibition closes with The Deposition (1594) from the Monastry of San Giorgio Maggiore, possibly the last work in which it is possible to identify the hand of the master. Other famous works on show will include what is considered to be one of his first acknowledged paintings, Jesus Among the Doctors (1542) lent by the Milan Cathedral's Diocesan Museum, and such celebrated masterpieces as the Madonna of the Treasurers and the Stealing of the Dead Body of St. Mark, both from the Gallerie dell’Accademia, and the St Mary of Egypt and the St Mary Magdalen from the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Visitors will also have the privilege of being able to witness the unprecedented and spectacular juxtaposition of the Last Supper from the Venetian church of San Trovaso with another version of the same subject, from the church of San Polo, painted five years later to celebrate one of the Scuole del Sacramento's favorite themes.

Alongside the large canvases with their dramatic impact and their tense, rapid brushwork, visitors will also be able to inspect the artist's intense historical and mythological works, charged with emotion, including, for example, the octagonal panels depicting Apollo and Daphne and Deucalion and Pyrrha, two of the fourteen made in 1541 for the ceiling of Casa Pisani and now in the Galleria Estense in Modena, or the splendid Susanna and the Elders from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
A major innovation at this exhibition is the commentary in the shape of texts in each room penned by Melania Mazzucco, a writer who has devoted numerous novels to, and written unforgettable pages on, Tintoretto and his circle. Her narrative will accompany visitors step by step, room by room, from the beginning to the end of the show.
This deliberately small exhibition comprises some 40 paintings (accompanied by a section devoted to the artistic environment contemporary with the Venetian master), all of the highest quality and on loan from leading international museums and collections, offering visitors a tight but extremely significant overview of the artistic career of Jacopo Tintoretto: that ‘tireless manual labourer’ as his fellow Venetian and art critic Boschin called him once and for all, ‘but without intending in any way to demean him’, as the great art critic Roberto Longhi pointed out, describing him in his turn as ‘a natural genius, a great inventor of dramatic tales that unfold in a choreography of vibrant light and shade... an endlessly entertaining performance.’

Tintoretto
25 February - 10 June 2012
Full price € 10.00
Reduced price € 8.50

Sunday to Thursday 10:00am to 8:00pm
Friday and Saturday 10:00am to 10:30pm
Admission is allowed until one hour before closing time.

Information and reservations +39 06 39967500 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            +39 06 39967500      

"Salvador Dalì“ Exhibition in Roma, from 9th of March 2012 to 1st of July 2012

"Salvador Dalì“
Exhibition in Roma, from  9th of March 2012 to 1st of July 2012

Exhibition in Roma: Joan Mirò from 16 March to 10 June 2012

Exhibition in Roma: Joan Mirò from 16 March to 10 June 2012
Chiostro del Bramante, Arco della Pace, 5 00186 Roma