Old St Peter’s revisited

The funeral today of the Pope Emeritus on the steps of St Peter’s reminded thrviewer of thelong continuity of the Papacy and the way in whic it bound up with the historic churches of Rome. This is especially true of what are now termed the Papal - formerly Patriarchal -  basilicas. Ancient foundations adapted, renovated, restored in the case of St John Lateran and Sta Maria Maggiore, entirely reconstructed after a disastrous fire in the early nineteenth century in the case of St Paul’s Outside the Walls, but in the case of St Peter’s completely replaced from 1506 onwards. 

There are paintings and reconstructions of Old St Peter’s but for the vast majority who visit it there are the Roman remains underneath around the tomb of St Peter and then there is the Renaissance symbol of Papal claims above - of the intervening millenium or more there is little to see, and I imagine it needs hunting out.

A new exhibition about medieval Rome seek to correct this, drawing together a hundred and sixty surviving pieces from the medieval centuries of Roman history. There is a report about it from Art and object at Rome's Missing Medieval Past

Looking at the medieval mosaics that survive from Old St Peter’s and which it illustrates and are dated  to the end of the thirteenth century I was reminded of George Holmes’ very readable Rome, Florence and the Origins of the Renaissance which begins with a look at the last years of Papal Rome before the Avignon Papacy. In particular he draws attention to the artistic commissions associated with the Franciscan Pope Nicolas IV and the monumental statues commissioned by Pope Boniface VIII with their classical references. In particular he suggests artists were looking at uncovered paintings from the Imperial period and seeking to imitate or emulate them in the 1290s. Such resonances are surely there on the mosaics featured in this new exhibition.