San Pietro in Montorio
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[edit] History
The church of San Pietro in Montorio was built on the site of an earlier ninth-century church dedicated to St. Peter on Rome's Janiculum hill. Commissioned by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, it marks a traditional location of St. Peter's crucifixion.
The Cardinal Priest of the Titulus S. Petri in Monte Aureo is Aloísio Lorscheider.
[edit] The Church Interior
The church is decorated with artworks by prominent sixteenth and seventeenth-century masters. The first chapel on the right contains Sebastiano del Piombo's Flagellation, which is partially based on drawings given to the painter by Michelangelo. Other notable artists represented are Giorgio Vasari, with the Conversion of St. Paul, Dirck van Baburen, with his Caravaggio-inspired Entombment in the Pietà chapel, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, a sculpture by whom can be seen in the Raimondi chapel on the left side of the nave. At the high altar are the sarcophagus of Beatrice Cenci, executed in 1599 for the murder of her father, and the tombs of Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone and Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, who fled Ireland in 1607.
[edit] The Tempietto
The Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio is a small commemorative martyrium built by Donato Bramante, possibly as early as 1502, in the courtyard of San Pietro in Montorio. It is considered a masterpiece of High Renaissance architecture.
After spending his first years in Milan, Bramante moved to Rome, where he was recognized by Cardinal Guiliano della Rovere, the soon-to-be Pope Julius II. One of Bramante's earliest commissions, the "Tempietto" is one of the most harmonious buildings of the Renaissance. It is meant to mark the traditional spot of St. Peter's martyrdom.
With all the transformations of Renaissance and Baroque Rome that were to follow, it is hard to sense now what an apparition this building was in beginning of the sixteenth century. It is almost a piece of sculpture, for it has little architectonic use. Despite its small scale the construction has all the grandeur and rigorous conformity of a Classical building. Perfectly proportioned, it is composed of slender Doric columns, a Doric entablature modeled after the ancient Theater of Marcellus, and a dome. According to an engraving in Sebastiano Serlio's Book III, Bramante planned to set it in within a colonnaded courtyard, but this plan was never executed.
[edit] External links
- Satellite Photo The Tempietto is the circular dome in the center, enclosed tightly by the cloister of San Pietro in Montorio. Just west is the white hemicircle of the Acqua Paola.
