Pietro da Cortona and Alexander VII


Pope Alexander VII ruled for twelve years, between 1655 and 1667, and in that time he changed the face of Rome more profoundly than any of his immediate predecessors. Among other advisors, Bernini and Cortona were in a class by themselves in Alexander's esteem. Together, they realized Alexander VII's vision of his Rome: a multiple stage set that could transform spaces and monuments into theatres, or teatro, of stylized action.

Bernini became the chief architect of nearly all major building tasks during Alexander's pontificate. The language Bernini developed in his architecture during the late fifties and the sixties would seem to have pleased Alexander. Buildings and squares were laid out on a large scale - even small structures must convey an impression of monumentality, as do the S. Andrea al Quirinale. Alexander saw him almost daily to chat, to be entertained and to be advised on whatever came along regarding questions in art .

One of Alexander's visions of his new Rome involved maintaining, restoring and incorporating ancient monuments into the urban fabric, especially those monuments that stood out and enhanced his picture of re-mapping of the city and the image he meant to present. The Pantheon was one such example.

The Pantheon was highly visible: located at a key point of the inner town and, preceded by the square. Alexander, from the start, attempted to isolate the Pantheon from the buildings attached to it and from the scourge of vendors who plied their trades in the portico. He began to realize some of these aims, but not without considerable effort against the active opposition of vendors and canons alike.

Early in 1657 all the vendors' stalls on the square were confined to marked sites rather than being allowed to clutter up the whole square. At the same time there was talk of tearing down the houses attached to the rotunda, properties of the canons, where they drew considerable rent from the houses and vendors' stalls. These properties had been administered for centuries as part of the holdings of the chapter and provided it with a significant annual income .

Finally in 1662, he prevailed over the canons' protests and had the houses torn down. The vendors were forcibly removed to Piazza di Pietra. Plans to settle them there permanently led to nothing. The exile of fishmongers, butchers and others lasted only a brief nine months before they were back in Piazza del Pantheon.

Bernini's presence in these businesses is documented in a group of six small sketches drawn with chalk in a summary manner. Among them are three plans and three façade elevations of the Pantheon . Of these, a corresponding plan and façade together compose an experiment to reshape the streets and buildings to either side of the portico. Both the streets and the buildings have been redesigned to border the Pantheon symmetrically.

Bernini's drawings showed the extent of his participation in restructuring the urban context of the Pantheon. In the first drawings he apparently took up the challenge of Alexander's vision for returning the temple to its ancient form, without obstructing buildings. The size of the chapter house was severely reduced to accommodate a pair of symmetrically located streets bordering the rotunda. In these studies the chapter house proved impossibly small, while the financial means to realize the new streets was lacking .

In the process of working with these components, it appears that Bernini flirted with the idea of transforming the octastyle front into a hexastyle front . The hexastyle experiments aimed to reveal as much of the rotunda as possible, to align it and the portico with the neighboring city blocks. These drawings indicated Bernini's interventions in the urban systematization of the Pantheon were devoted to resolving the appearance of the ancient portico within the design of the streets immediately surrounding it.

The Pope's foremost aim was to embellish Rome and to realize his and his architects' vision of her as a truly modern city. Spacious squares with regular boundaries were needed to facilitate the traffic and they were decorous and an ornament to the entire city. In addition to Alexander's modern urbanism, were monumental palaces and church facades in full view, strongly articulated by planes, light and shade, such as those of S. Maria della Pace, S. Maria in Via Lata, or Cortona's palace project for Piazza Colonna. The open area and the bordering buildings must complement one another, and it must be focused on a structure standing out to hold the viewer's attention.

S. Maria della Pace, piazza and church jointly, was the first such showpiece designed and completed by Alexander. The way he went about it exemplifies the manner in which an architectural project grew under and on him. Planning started on a small scale as a job of restoring and renovating rather than anything major. Pietro da Cortona was put in charge of the Pace project.

Traffic problems created by the increasing number of coaches had dealt with and in the remodeling of S. Maira della Pace their solution was of prime importance. In front of the church there was no room for approaching or parking. How to solve this difficulty became a major issue for Alexander and his advisors. The solution was achieved by the collaboration between the pope and his advisors during the planning stage, hence the final solution was arrived at without delay; and the project grew, during constant discussions.

In the drawings, we see that Cortona developed the church and piazza in three stages, first with a modest façade , then with an elaborate piazza and more engaging front that attached the church to its surroundings, and finally with a plan-never executed-to extend the axis of the church deep into the city fabric.

Neither solution resolves the traffic problem. Hence an advisor of Alexander's collaborating with Cortona , proposed to break through the houses on the left-hand side of Via della Pace. Coaches then would drive in from the next parallel street and leave along Via della Pace. A plan of Cortona's illustrates the suggestion.

Alexander seemed not motivated and in talking to him Pietro da Cortona sketched in with a few pencil strokes a far grander and more expensive project:

He cut a piece from the Anima buildings to the right in addition to taking over the houses on the left: the five-sided piazza thus outlined embraced the porch of the church and left in front and on either side an area quite a bit larger than the funnel .

This last plan outlined the elevations both of the grand show façade of the church in three variants, and of the palace fronts designed to mask the houses around the five-sided piazza. These elevations presented essentially the final façade design of S. Maria della Pace . The portico is curved convex, then concave back in the side wings. This design disguised the actual limitation of space around the church; it also created a wealthy backdrop for the site. The architectural unit was to be preserved as a showpiece and a key element in what was to become Alexander's re-mapping of Rome .

To outline Alexander's vision of Rome, projects well-documented but never brought to completion are as important as those carried through. Piazza Colonna is such a project, envisioned in innovative forms and never completed. The square was a sore sight when Alexander came to power: bordered by mean structures and unfinished palaces and irregular in shape. Space was limited and coaches could neither approach the palaces to the right, nor could they park.

Alexander and his advisors were aware that to reorganize the square, both the siting of the Column of Marcus Aurelius and the transfer of the Trevi waters to Piazza colonna were an integral part of the project. Several solutions appear to have been discussed by those involved. In the early spring of 1659, Pietro da Cortona came to the fore with an exciting proposal: to build on the site of the convent block a "fountain palace", thus providing for the needs of the Chigi and at one stroke bringing the Trevi Fountain to Piazza Colonna .

The project is preserved in three versions . In the most impressive modification of the project, Krautheimer described: 'a huge oval fountain with figures is enveloped and surmounted by a palace; the façade, articulated by an colossal order of columns and pilasters above a plain rusticated basement, curves back in the centre to open over the fountain in a triumphal arch flanked by short wings' . An ingenious design would have dominated the square on a grand scale. But the proposal was dropped as Alexander's brother and nephew preferred comfortable dullness. Nor did they want to wait for a new palace to be built - it would have taken a few years anyhow.

Public squares, for Alexander VII, are an ornament to the city, apart from filling a public need in the traffic system of the mid-17th century cityscape, like the long streets, the squares were intended both to fill an urgent practical needs and to present a grand show to the visitor. Piazza S. Pietro was one such example, it was the most ambitious and to Alexander the most important of his teatri.

Alexander and Bernini set out to resolve the existed surroundings and to provide a dignified approach to the church and to the Vatican Palace on its right. The piazza itself was shapeless; the façade of St. Peter's spread broadly and seemingly much too low across its far end. The left, south half of the square was all cluttered up with small and large buildings.

Planning, begun in the first year of Alexander's reign, as always proceeded through a number of successive phases in interplay between the pope, Bernini, other advisors and hard opposition voiced in meetings of the Commission of Cardinals charged with supervising the project .

Early proposals abound: one a longish trapezoid; another one rectangular; and perhaps a third, circular . Alexander backed Bernini's next proposal early in the following year, involving the demolition of further property to make the piazza oval and to link it to the church and to the Vatican Palace by a trapezoidal forecourt.

It was carried out under constant pressure from the ever-inpatient Alexander, but it was not fully carried out. Bernini's plan envisaged aside from the sweep of the lateral arms a transverse arm to fill the gap between the two, opposite the church. Only two passages, one on either side of that third arm, would have allowed coaches and pedestrians to enter the grand show of the piazza.

This grand show was enclosed by the colonnades, articulated by the obelisk and the twin fountains along its transverse axis and linked to church and palace by the slanting corridors. Bernini conceived this trapezoidal area as a forecourt for the church to be seen from its steps and for the visitor to give himself over to the grandeur of the show spread before his eyes:

Coming from the noisy bustle of the crowded avenue, the visitor would have been stopped by the barrier of the third arm. He would have passed through one of the entrances to either side, and stepping onto the piazza and being enveloped by the sweep of the colonnades, have taken in for the first time the full view of church, piazza and towering palace.

Only after passing through or by that third arm and entering the piazza would St. Peter's present itself in full view, stairs, façade, nave, dome and all. As Bernini developed his last projects for Piazza S. Pietro from 1665 to 1667, the function of the terzo braccio as a barrier withholding the view of the church from a visitor approaching and conterminally the planning of an avenue would seem to have become almost a necessity.

The sequence of third arm, oval piazza, trapezoidal squares, steps and landings, whether leading to the church and the Cathedra Petri or to the papal throne, enforced upon the visitor a gradual and deliberate approach. Concurrently is set apart the grand showpiece from the city, yet made it part of the urban texture.

Opposition was strong from the outset: objections were raised against demolishing that much housing, and building a decoration construction in these times of misfortune and scarcity. Alexander's advisors, Bernini among them, acting as public relations men, were ready with their answers: the entire operation was part of the pope's policy to supplement almsgiving by providing employment and making money circulate Alexander preferred a spectacular building in honour of God and His saints as well as for the common good, a building to dominate the whole of Rome .

A large-scale building program would stimulate employment in the construction - diggers, quarries, carters, bricklayers and stonemasons - was an act of almsgiving in disguise; it would also attract tourists and bring employment to domestics and funds to innkeepers and noble families wiling to let their palaces wholly or partially for a few months or longer.

The pope and his advisors were fully concerned about difficulties created by growing traffic and by the obstruction of streets and squares by markets all over town. On grand occasions the square would serve as a much needed parking space, for parking large numbers of coaches. On the other hand, the area in front of St. Peter's and the palace was all open to heat and rain; the oval piazza and the porticoes provided cover for coaches as well as pedestrians.

Granted that building Piazza S. Pietro contributed to ruining the finances of the seventeenth century papacy, it still remains Bernini's grandest architectural creation and a key monument in Alexander's re-mapping of Rome. Architecture on a large scale was what Alexander passionately cared for: splendid buildings in an urban context.

The key to his remaking the city was Alexander's attempt to herald his status as a temporal and spiritual leader. Many of Alexander's architectural achievements in Rome were overtly political gestures. Attention must have been drawn to Piazza del Popolo by the arrival of Queen Christina in 1655, at a time when there was as yet no architectural overture to the city. Here would be the natural place to consolidate an urban image announcing its glories to all newcomers.

Bernini developed the idea of porticoes terminating the fork-like streets from 1657, and this was amplified with Carlo Rainaldi's scheme for twin churches in 1661. Like Renaissance conceptions of ancient theatres, the twin churches transformed Rome's principal northern entrance into a set piece.

Nowhere in Rome is the intertwining of stage design and city planning more clearly evident than in Alexander's re-mapping of Piazza del Popolo. Prior to his election, the area right behind the city gate, Porta del Popolo, where visitors from the north would have entered Rome, was a shapeless, longish space. The area was filled with cattle, carts and farm folk, the gate itself and the city wall half-ruined .

Re-modeling under Alexander started with S. Maria del Popolo. The city gate was to glorify both the Chigi name and the entry in December 1655 of Queen Christina of Sweden; Bernini redesigned the gate when the authorities and the nobility in coaches and on horseback assembled at the gate to accompany her along the Corso. A double broken gable was placed atop displaying the festooned Chigi mountains and crowned by their star enclosed in a roundel .

Starting from such limited plans, Alexander was soon tempted, as so often he was, to a far vaster project: to shape into a grand square the undistinguished area behind the gate to its southward termination whence issued the trident of streets.

Plans were prepared to hide as much as possible the unequal width and length of the wedges and to articulate the entire area. One suggest to cut straight and somewhat simplistically equalized; another equalized by delicately concave curves complementing each other and well-suited to carry porticoes .

Sometime over the following three years the project changed . Instead of porticoes, twin churches were to be placed on the wedges; these are used to unify the piazza. The aim being to make the two wedges equal in width and length, to enlarge the opening of the Corso and to have two churches of equal design terminate the view.

As Bernini envisioned Piazza del Popolo, the most concerning element was the shape of the area, either form by a sequence of spaces and thus more sophisticated or simplistically reduced to the continuous flow of a funnel as indeed it was executed. Alexander and his architects had planned the visitor entering through Porta del Popolo was to be drew, into the short, reversed funnel flanked by the façade of S. Maria de Popolo. The whole recalled a stage set, where the rising towers and domes of churches enlivened the perspectives along the three streets.

When Alexander was elected pope the map of Rome in its essential outline had little changed over the preceding fifty years. The importance of his projects was to give a new image to Rome: a great city both ancient and modern, a focus to attract the educated of all nations and of all faiths. This involved improving existing street system, minor links opened up and streets straightened. To translate this vision into a reality Pope Alexander had the architects at hand: Bernini and Pietro da Cortona. They were the chief architects responsible for the grand projects executed during Alexander VII's pontificate period, who created large spaces to envelope the architecture within a setting, in which spectators experience in a specific way deliberately designed by them.





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Bibliography:

Krautheimer, 1983: Krautheimer, R., ' "Il porton di questo giardino": An Urbanistic Project for Rome by Alexander VII (1655-1667)', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XLII, Mar 1983, pp. 35-42.

Krautheimer, 1985: Krautheimer, R., The Rome of Alexander VII, 1655-1667, Princeton, New Jersey, 1985.

Marder, 1989: Marder, T., 'Bernini and Alexander VII: Criticism and Praise of the Pantheon in the Seventeenth Century', The Art Bulletin, Vol. 71, No. 4, Dec 1989, pp. 628-645.

Marder, 1991: Marder, T., 'Alexander VII, Bernini, and the Urban Setting of the Pantheon in the Seventeenth Century', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, L: 273-292, Sep 1991, pp. 273-292.

Marder, ??

Wittkower, 1975: Wittkower, R., Studies in the Italian Baroque, London, 1975.



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