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April 11, 2008
My aching knee . . . Churchgoing
I overdid it a little yesterday and am paying the price today. Luckily, the Italian pharmacy system is happy to refill American prescriptions, and I brought an anti-inflammatory for the gout. For euro 1.45 I got 25 capsules - enough for a run at reducing the swelling.
So yesterday I hit the Celian Hill (by bus! The 81 runs from Largo Argentina right to via Navicella), looked at the aqueduct remains, Sta Maria in Domnica, and Santo Stefano Rotondo. Unfortunately, the Mithraeum under the last church is only open on 4th Saturdays - so I'll try to make it back then.
The apse mosaic it Sta Maria in Domnica is one of my favorites in Rome. It shows Pope Paschal I (817-824) holding the foot of the Virgin, who is enthroned with the Christ Child and surrounded by a heavenly court of angels. The inscription is remarkably fine.
Paschal also built or rebuilt Sta Prassede and Sta Cecilia in Trastevere - and the apse mosaics at least survive at those two churches as well.
So here's the core of Santo Stefano Rotondo. The Corinthian columns support a 12th Century structural intervention - a diaphragm wall that ends up being strangely beautiful in the space, even though it cuts the cylinder in half. The Ionic rotunda is late 5th C - spolia columns but with freshly-carved capitals and entablature. Santo Stefano is a strange church - much reduced from its original circumference, but still beautiful. The main exedra with its 7th C apse showing two military saints is unfortunately for me very much in restauro; I wanted to look at it up close to compare it to the 9th C mosaics made for Paschal's churches.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at April 11, 2008 12:31 PM