NORTHWESTERN ART REVIEW
Figure 1. Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, “Baldacchino di San Pietro,” Bronze, 1623-1634, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City.
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and Christ’s power, rather than the directionless and absurd architecture and decorative additions of the Mannerists. Under a commission for Pope Paul V in 1606, Carlo Maderno completed the east façade of New St. Peter’s in 1612, and today it still stands as a symbol of the Catholic Church’s authority similar to the Baldacchino. Its triangular pediment and text-filled entablature perched atop Corinthian columns strongly resembles the façade of Maderno’s Santa Susanna, a building whose “drama” Paul V admired and what eventually influenced his decision to commission Maderno to revive St. Peter’s12. Acting as a “symbolic seat of the papacy,”13 Maderno built off of both Bramante’s and Michelangelo’s prior plans for the building’s form and façade, leaving St. Peter’s lacking the vertical directionality common in Baroque architecture, and explicitly obvious in Santa Susanna on which Maderno quasi-based its design14. Maderno’s plan for St. Peter’s façade called for two tall bell towers on either end, detached from the lengthy horizontal façade and framing Michelangelo’s attic form. However, after Paul V forbade the creation of the towers, fearing their immense weight, the building now only presents a “lumpish façade,” leading to an incomplete and horizontal appearance15. Maderno’s addition of two pilaster-bound segments on either side of the façade break away from Michelangelo’s Greek cross plan16, and although they add unnecessary horizontality, they also emphasize the Baroque elements of the façade through their windows with segmental pediments. They also serve to highlight the increasing rhythm of columns, as they double as the façade
moves toward the center. Conceptual challenges aside, St. Peter’s façade still fails in reaching the level of Baroque appearance as fellow papal commission, the Baldacchino, specifically in its ability to recall papal power. Both pieces exhibit the orb and cross motif, directly identifying them as Catholic works aimed at promoting the Church in times of turmoil. However, where St. Peter’s has its rhythmic colossal columns topped by Paul V’s papal coat of arms in the attic form, the Baldacchino places the keys and crown of the papacy in the hands of cherub figures reaching toward the Christ symbol, a much more direct visual tie between Christ and the papacy. By framing the altar, an “elaborate sculpture representing the throne of Saint Peter,”17 the Baldacchino produces a sense of immediacy, allowing the viewer to see at once the goal of the structure and its intended use. Contrastingly, a viewer must stand incredibly far from St. Peter’s in order to see its dome and cupola, lessening its ability to heighten onlookers’ religious experience. Succeeding Paul V’s reign as pope, Pope Urban VIII took the Church throne and commissioned Bernini to create works such as the Baldacchino. At the same time, Pietro da Cortona served Urban as an artist, creating the Triumph of the Barberini ceiling fresco in the Gran Salone of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome between 1633-1639. As another Baroque papal commission, Cortona’s piece is comparable to the Barberini in its level of excess and ornamentation. Cortana fills the Triumph of the Barberini with clustered bodies in all areas of the fresco, whether they be mythological, allegorical, or Christian. In the center of the ceiling, elevated by a quadrature appearance creating an architectural extension upward, is Divine Providence bestowing eternal life upon the Barberini family, who are depicted through the papal keys and crown, heraldic wreath, and bees. The figures surrounding the wreath below Divine Providence are also said to be Charity, Hope, and Faith18. When combined with the statuesque forms intertwined with its architectural elements, and the figures outside the architectural frame reminiscent of Michelangelo’s sibyl figures in the Sistine Chapel, the fresco takes on elements of Classical iconography common in the Renaissance period that the Baldacchino does not. Although hidden in the chaotic nature of its brightly colored and visually overwhelming appearance, the Triumph’s subject matter honors the current pope while overarchingly presenting it under a guise of antique-like figures. In this way, the Baldacchino is again superior in displaying