R. A. Scotti (27 page)

I
f not the greatest story ever told,
*
the creation of the Basilica of St. Peter is its epilogue. The narrative is written in the stones of the Basilica and in the landmarks of the city. Bramante's piers set heroic dimensions, but they are the outline, not the essence.

Call it the power of an idea or divine inspiration. From what could have been a Tower of Babel, the artists, popes, and knaves who built St. Peter's incised a symbol of the transcendent Christ against the landscape of a city that embodied paganism. As the Basilica rose stone upon stone, the city of Rome grew with it. From the dust of empire and the neglect of the Middle Ages, it became what Byron called “the city of the soul.”

Few buildings have less of Alberti's
concinnitas
than the Basilica of St. Peter. Through the years, architects and pontiffs followed one another in rapid and sometimes wanton succession. At times, the construction site seemed more like the set of a French farce, doors opening and closing and characters crisscrossing the stage in dizzying numbers, than the site of the architectural endeavor of the epoch. There were numerous builders, many contradictory plans, and disharmonious junctures. Yet entering St. Peter's, the visitor experiences unity as solid as dogma. There is no suggestion that the Basilica was a work in progress for more than two centuries. From a confusion of sacred and secular, from a clash of genius and a stew of ironies, an extraordinary feat of architecture and engineering emerged.

Time and again, construction collided with history and stalled. Emperors and kings, alliances and battles, heads that rolled actually and figuratively, egos that chafed, recede before the immutable presence of the Basilica. In its ability to inspire awe—to make the heart stop and the soul soar—art triumphs over politics.

The sacrifice was huge. The Renaissance popes hocked the family jewels in the name of art, begged, borrowed, and splintered the Christian Church to build the Basilica. The details changed, but the ideal remained constant—to construct a metaphor in stone for the leap of faith that is at the heart of the gospel of Christ.

Although the fact that it took so long was a matter of money and politics more than a lack of vision, the delays seem serendipitous. The perfectly proportioned Renaissance architecture, each part in exact geometric ratio to the other and to the whole, seems too tidy for such a sprawling, messy, overreaching institution as the Church of Rome. The Baroque is its truer reflection.

When it was finally completed, the Basilica was truly catholic, incorporating in one supreme construction the conviction of numerous popes and the genius of many architects—the power of Bramante, the grace of Raphael, the clarity of Michelangelo, and the theater of Bernini. In its imposing size and majesty, the brilliance of the Renaissance and the drama of the Baroque converge. Two million tons of stone transformed into spirit create what Rome's preeminent historian, Edward Gibbon, called “the most glorious structure that ever has been applied to the use of religion.”

San Pietro in Vaticano lifted Rome from the rubble of its lost grandeur and made it the Eternal City. Gothic cathedrals reach up to heaven. St. Peter's—muscular, sublime, irrevocable—brings heaven to earth.

• St. Peter's covers a total area of 227,070 square feet, more than five acres. The floor area is 3.7 acres.
  
• The façade is 375 feet wide by 167 feet high.
  
• The interior of the Basilica is 451 feet wide by 613 feet long—almost one eighth of a mile.
  
• The columns and pilasters are more than 90 feet high.
  
• The circumference of the central piers is 240 feet.
  
• The nave and transept are 151.5 feet high.
  
• The nave is 613 feet long by 84 feet wide.
  
• The length of the transept is 451 feet.
  
• The height of the dome, from the pavement to the tip of the cross, is 452 feet.
  
• The diameter of the dome is 137.7 feet. (The dome of the Pantheon exceeds it by 4.9 feet, but St. Peter's dome is three times higher.)
  
• The drum is 630 feet in circumference and 65.6 feet high, or 240 feet from the ground.
  
• The lantern is 63 feet high.
  
• The ball and cross are 8 and 16 feet high, respectively.
  
• The Baldacchino is about 100 feet high.
  
• St. Peter's Square is 1,115 feet long by 650 feet wide.
  
• Each arm of the colonnade is 306 feet long and 64 feet high.
  
• The colonnades have 284 columns, 88 pilasters, and 140 statues.
  
• The obelisk is 83.6 feet (with base and cross, 132 feet) high and weighs 320 tons.
  

These bold-faced phrases are not necessarily self-contained. In most cases they highlight an area of thought suggested or supported by the cited sources.

CHAPTER ONE: THE FIRST STONE, APRIL 1506

3
a lavender cloak:
Vasari, Giorgio,
The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects
, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (London: Everyman Library, 1927).

7
Named for the
vati
:
Hersey, George,
High Renaissance Art in St. Peter's and the Vatican
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993).

CHAPTER TWO: THE FIRST ST. PETER’S

13
Romans blamed him:
Hibbert, Christopher,
Rome: The Biography of a City
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1985).

18
Monte Caprino:
Ibid.

18
extorting what they could and decapitating whom they dared:
Ibid.

CHAPTER THREE: IL TERRIBILIS

23
He enters history in a fresco by Melozzo da Forlì:
Klaszko, Julian,
Rome and the Renaissance: The Pontificate of Julius II
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1903).

CHAPTER FIVE: A SURPRISE WINNER

41
The brothers “from Sangallo”:
Heydenreich, Ludwig H., and Lotz, Wolfgang,
Architecture in Italy, 1400
–
1600
, trans. Mary Hottinger (New York: Penguin Books, 1974).

43
Bramante was an outsider:
Bruschi, Arnaldo,
Bramante
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1977).

45
earning five ducats a month:
Ibid.

46
his drawings of centrally planned churches:
Heydenreich and Lotz,
Architecture in Italy, 1400
–
1600.

CHAPTER SEVEN: VAULTING AMBITION

57
Space and volume:
Ackerman, James S.,
The Architecture of Michelangelo
(London: Zwemmer, 1961 [Pelican, 1971]).

59
in albis:
Zander, Pietro,
Creating St. Peter's: Architectural Treasures of the Vatican
(New Haven, Conn: Knights of Columbus Museum in Association with the Fabbrica di San Pietro, 2004).

62
artists became independent contractors:
Barzun, Jacques,
From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present
(New York: HarperCollins, 2000).

CHAPTER EIGHT: ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

70
As many as fifty banking houses had offices in Rome:
Gilbert, Felix,
The Pope, His Banker, and Venice
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980).

CHAPTER NINE: A CHRISTIAN IMPERIUM

77
the Menicantonio Sketchbook:
Millon, Henry A., and Lampugnani, Vittorio M., eds.,
The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo
(New York: Rizzoli, 1994).

80
a laborer worked for 15 to 20 ducats a year:
Partridge, Loren W.,
The Renaissance in Rome, 1400
–
1600
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996). Rowland, Ingrid Drake,
The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rome
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

84
Rome replaced Florence:
Cook, Olive,
The Wonders of Italy
(Viking Press, New York, 1965).

CHAPTER TEN: A VIPER’S NEST

97
Bramante reciting Dante to him like an actor on a stage:
Bruschi,
Bramante.

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE FIRST MEDICI PRINCE

116
Florentines flocked south:
Hibbert,
Rome.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: A ROMAN CANDLE

135
architectural renderings:
Heydenreich and Lotz,
Architecture in Italy, 1400
–
1600
.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE REVENGE OF THE SANGALLOS

138
Antonio built the centering:
Heydenreich and Lotz,
Architecture in Italy, 1400–1600.

139
more than one thousand of his drawings:
Ibid.

141
Twenty thousand men:
Gilbert,
The Pope, His Banker, and Venice.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: SALVATION FOR SALE

145
only confession and contrition:
New Catholic Encyclopedia,
(Washington, D.C.: Thomson/Gale Group, 2003) in association with the Catholic University of America.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: SWEET REVENGE

152
one press in 1465:
Burke, Peter,
The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in

Italy
(Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999).

152
the power of the printing press:
Barzun,
From Dawn to Decadence.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: A BRIEF MOMENT OF TRUTH

155 “
How many of the clergy”:
Burke,
The Italian Renaissance.

156 “
agony of Catholicism”:
Laffont, Robert, ed.,
A History of Rome and the Romans: From Romulus to John XXIII
(Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1962).

CHAPTER NINETEEN: MEDICI REDUX

160
Charles V ruled an empire:
Barzun,
From Dawn to Decadence.

162
German and Austrian troops marched south:
Hibbert,
Rome;
Cook,
The Wonders of Italy;
Laffont,
A History of Rome and the Romans;
Stinger, Charles L.,
The Renaissance in Rome
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).

CHAPTER TWENTY: A VIOLENT AWAKENING

173
Familiar habits were forbidden:
Partridge,
The Renaissance in Rome.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: JULIUS’S FOLLY

187
money to finance it:
Heydenreich and Lotz,
Architecture in Italy, 1400
–
1600.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: MOTU PROPRIO

193
the Fabbrica assumed that construction would continue:
Heydenreich and Lotz,
Architecture in Italy, 1400–1600.

200
Michelangelo's method of building:
Ackerman,
The Architecture of Michelangelo
.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: A NEW CENTURY

229
the Fabbrica now established offices in many cities:
The Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro dell'Urbe in Malta,
http://melitalhistorica.250free.com.

229
Known as the Sampietrini:
Zander,
Creating St. Peter's.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: THE ROMANCE OF THE BAROQUE

245
The young Bernini remained thoughtful:
Bernini, Domenico
Vita del cavalier Gio. Lorenzo Bernino
(Roma: A spese di R. Bernabò, 1713).

246
An English diarist, visiting Rome in 1664:
Hibbert,
Rome.

247
cinematic special effects:
Cook,
The Wonders of Italy.

249 He began with a small wax model: Borsi,
Franco, Bernini Architetto
(New York: Rizzoli, 1984).

250
one tenth of the Church's annual income:
Vicchi, Roberta,
The Major Basilicas of Rome
(Florence: Scala, 1999).

CHAPTER THIRTY: FULL CIRCLE

265
The experience begins at the river crossing:
Clark, Kenneth,
Civilisation: A Personal View
(London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1969).