San Gregorio Magno al Celio
| San Gregorio Magno al Celio | ||
|---|---|---|
| Church of Saints Andrew and Gregory the Great on the Caelian Hill | ||
Chiesa dei Santi Andrea e Gregorio al Monte Celio | ||
Style Baroque | | |
| Groundbreaking | 6th century AD | |
| Completed | 1633 | |
| Administration | ||
| Diocese | Rome | |
San Gregorio Magno al Celio, also known as San Gregorio al Celio or simply San Gregorio, is a
San Gregorio is located on the Caelian Hill, in front of the Palatine. Next to the basilica and monastery is a convent of nuns and a homeless shelter run by Mother Teresa of Calcutta's congregation, the Missionaries of Charity.[1]
History
The church had its beginning as a simple
The decayed church and the small monastery attached to it on the now-isolated hill passed to the Camaldolese monks in 1573.[5] This Order still occupies the monastery. The archives of the monastery were published by the Camaldolese abbot Gian Benedetto Mittarelli in his monumental history, the Annales Camaldulenses ordini S. Benedicti ab anno 970 ad anno 1770 (published 1755–1773).
The current edifice was rebuilt on the old site to designs by Giovanni Battista Soria in 1629–1633, commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese; work was suspended with his death, and taken up again in 1642.[6] Francesco Ferrari (1725–1734) designed the interior.
The church is preceded by a wide staircase rising from the via di San Gregorio, the street separating the Caelian hill from the Palatine. The façade, the most prominent and artistically successful work of
The marble cathedra associated with Gregory the Great is preserved in the stanza di S. Gregorio in the church; a shrewd and accurate reconstruction of its ancient appearance was illustrated as Gregory's throne by Raphael in the Disputa.[8] The lion-griffin protomes that form its front and appear in Raphael's fresco are continued on the sides in an acanthus scroll. Three more marble thrones of precisely the same model[9] may be seen in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, in Berlin and in the Acropolis Museum. Gisela Richter has suggested that all are replicas of a lost, late Hellenistic original; none of the replicas has preserved the separately-carved base that would have continued the lions' legs, very much as Raphael surmised.[10]
The church follows the typical basilican plan, a nave divided from two lateral aisles, in this case by sixteen antique columns with pilasters. Other antique columns have been reused: four support the portico on the left of the nave that leads into the former
In the 1970s, the Camaldolese monks allowed Mother Teresa to set up a food kitchen for the poor of the city in a building attached to the monastery. It is still maintained by her religious congregation, the Missionaries of Charity.
Architecture
Interior decoration
The decoration includes
Oratories
To the left of the church, tightly grouped in the garden, are three oratories commissioned by Cardinal
Oratory of Saint Andrew
The central oratory has frescoes of the Flagellation of Saint Andrew by Domenichino; a Saint Andrew brought to the temple and Saints Peter and Paul by Reni; a Virgin with Saints Andrew and Gregory by Cristoforo Roncalli, il Pomarancio; and finally S. Silvia e S. Gregorio by Giovanni Lanfranco.
Oratory of St. Silvia
The oratory to the viewer's right is dedicated to St. Silvia, St. Gregory's mother: it is probably located over her tomb. This oratory has frescoes of a Concert of Angels by Reni and David and Isaiah by Sisto Badalocchio.
Oratory of St. Barbara
This oratory, with frescoes (1602) by
Ancient Roman ruins
The grounds of the oratories also include some substructures of the Roman imperial period, that may merely have been tabernae, but one of which exhibits striking features that encourage some experts[citation needed] to think it is an early Christian meeting place and baptismal pool.
The discovery of an Aphrodite
On the grounds of the monastery was discovered the
Cardinal-Priests of Santi Andrea e Gregorio al Monte Celio
- Ambrogio Bianchi, O.S.B. (8 July 1839 – 3 March 1856)
- Michele Viale-Prelà (18 September 1856 – 15 May 1860)
- Angelo Quaglia (30 September 1861 – 27 August 1872)
- Henry Edward Manning (31 March 1875 – 14 January 1892)
- Herbert Vaughan (19 January 1893 – 19 June 1903)
- Alessandro Lualdi (18 April 1907 – 12 November 1927)
- Jusztinián György Serédi, O.S.B. (19 December 1927 – 29 March 1945)
- Bernard William Griffin(18 February 1946 – 19 August 1956)
- John Francis O’Hara, C.S.C. (15 December 1958 – 28 August 1960)
- José Humberto Quintero Parra (16 January 1961 – 8 July 1984)
- Edmund Casimir Szoka(28 June 1988 – 20 August 2014)
- Francesco Montenegro (14 February 2015 – present)
Notes
- ^ "Relics of St Teresa venerated in Rome following canonization". Vatican Radio. 5 September 2016. Retrieved 15 January 2021.
- ^ 580 is the date given in . Christian Hülsen, Le Chiese di Roma nel Medio Evo (Florence: Olschki) 1927: "Gregorii in Clivo Scauri"
- ^ Hülsen 1927, eo. loc..
- ^ Huelsen-Jordan p257;Topogr. I, 3 p. 231).
- ^ (Comunità monastica di Camaldoli ) "San Gregorio al Celio nella storia" Archived 18 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Touring Club Italiano, Roma e dintorni 1965:382.
- basilicas. The forecourt and the basilica's façade were also rebuilt by Soria.
- ^ Philipp Fehl, "Raphael's Reconstruction of the Throne of St. Gregory the Great" The Art Bulletin 55.3 (September 1973:373–379).
- ^ Gisela Richter observes that the technique of pointing to create accurate reproductions was not introduced until about 100 BC, in support of her argument that all three thrones are Roman copies.
- ^ Richter, "The marble throne on the Acropolis and its replicas", The American Journal of Arxhaeology 58 (October 1954:276-76, and illus.) and idem, Furniture of the Greeks, Romans and Etruscans, 1968:32f.
- ^ Concerning the original location of the work and the reconstruction of the marble 'pala' see Darko Senekovic, "S. Gregorio al Celio im Quattrocento: Abt Amatisco, Reform von Monteoliveto und Stilinnovation", in: K. Corsepius, D. Mondini, D. Senekovic et al., Opus tessellatum: Modi und Grenzgange der Kunstwissenschaft (Studien zur Kunstgeschichte 157), Hildesheim/Zürich/New York : Georg Olms Verlag 2004.
- ^ Acta S. Gregorii Papae, ii.23 (noted by Fehl 1973:373 and note 4.
- ^ It bears the signature of Menophantos — Apo tis en troadi afroditis minofantos epoiei — a Greek sculptor, apparently of the first century BCE, of whom nothing more is known.
- ^ Winckelmann, vol V, ch. II; William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, (1870) v.II:1044 (on-line text).
References
- Senekovic, Darko, S. Gregorio al Celio, in: P. C. Claussan, D. Mondini, D. Senekovic, Die Kirchen der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter 1050–1300, Band 3 (G-L), Stuttgart 2010, pp. 187–213.
- Haskell, Francis and Nicholas Penny, 1981. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900 (Yale University Press). Cat. no. 84.
- Helbig, Wolfgang, Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertümer in Rom 4th edition, 1963–72, vol. II.
External links
Media related to San Gregorio al Celio at Wikimedia Commons