San Pietro in Montorio

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San Pietro in Montorio

San Pietro in Montorio is a church in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
, which includes in its courtyard The Tempietto (a small commemorative martyrium

Tomb

For the New York prison see The Tombs.A tomb is a repository for the remains of the death. The term generally refers to any structurally enclosed interment space or burial chamber, of varying sizes....
) built by Donato Bramante

Donato Bramante

Donato Bramante was an Italian architect, who introduced the Early Renaissance style to Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rome, where his most famous design was St....
.

church of San Pietro in Montorio was built on the site of an earlier ninth-century church dedicated to St. Peter

Saint Peter

Saint Peter was a leader of the early Christianity church, who features prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles....
on Rome's

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
Janiculum

Janiculum

Janiculum is a hill in western Rome. Although the second-tallest hill , in the contemporary city of Rome, the Janiculum does not figure among the proverbial Seven Hills of Rome, being west of the Tiber and outside the boundaries of the ancient city....
hill. Commissioned by Ferdinand

Ferdinand II of Aragon

Ferdinand the Catholic was king of Aragon , Sicily , Naples , Valencia , Sardinia and Navarre, Count of Barcelona, de jure uxoris King of Crown of Castile and then Regent of that country also from 1508 to his death, in the name of his mentally unstable daughter Joanna the Mad....
and Isabella of Spain, it marks a traditional location of St. Peter's crucifixion.

The church's current Cardinal-Protector is James Francis Cardinal Stafford, since 1 March 2008.

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

Sebastiano del Piombo

Sebastiano del Piombo , byname of Sebastiano Luciani, was an Italy Renaissance-Mannerism painter of the early 16th century famous for his combination of the colors of the Venetian school and the monumental forms of the Roman school....
Flagellation and Transfiguration (1516–1524).

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History

The church of San Pietro in Montorio was built on the site of an earlier ninth-century church dedicated to St. Peter

Saint Peter

Saint Peter was a leader of the early Christianity church, who features prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles....
on Rome's

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
Janiculum

Janiculum

Ferdinand II of Aragon

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

Sebastiano del Piombo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance Painting, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer....
, who had befriended Sebastiano in Rome, supplied figure drawings that were incorporated into the Flagellation.

The second chapel has a fresco by Niccolò Circignani

Niccolò Circignani

Niccol? Circignani was an Italy painter of the late-Renaissance or Mannerism period.Born in Pomarance, he is one of three Italian painters called Pomarancio....
(1654) (il Pomarancio), some Renaissance frescoes from the school of Pinturrichio, and an allegorical sibyl and virtue attributed to Baldassarre Peruzzi.

The fourth chapel has a ceiling fresco by Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari was an Italy Painting and architect, who is today famous for his biography of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art history writing....
. Although there is no grave marker, tradition has it that Beatrice Cenci

Beatrice Cenci

Beatrice Cenci was an Italy noblewoman. She is famous as the protagonist in a lurid murder trial in Rome.Beatrice was the daughter of Francesco Cenci, an aristocrat who, due to his violent temper and immoral behaviour, had found himself in trouble with papal justice more than once....
—executed in 1599 for the murder of her abusive father and made famous by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major England Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest Lyric poetry in the English language....
, among others—is buried either in this chapel or below the high altar.

The ceiling of the fifth chapel contains another fresco, the Conversion of St. Paul, by Vasari. The altarpiece is attributed to Giulio Mazzoni

Giulio Mazzoni

Giulio Mazzoni was an Italy painter and stuccoist, active during the Renaissance period. He was born in Piacenza, but studied in Rome under Daniele da Volterra, and was active about the year 1568....
, while the funerary monument of Cardinal del Monte

Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte

Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte was a cardinal of the Catholic Church, and a figure of notoriety in his age.Born in Borgo San Donnino, now Fidenza, the son of a female beggar and an unknown father, the illiterate but vivacious and good-looking 14 year old was picked up on the streets of Parma by Cardinal Giovanni Maria Del Monte and officiall...
and Roberto Nobili are by Bartolomeo Ammannati.

Till 1797, Raphael

Raphael

Raphael Sanzio, usually known by his first name alone was an Italy Painting and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings....
's final masterpiece, the Transfiguration
Transfiguration (Raphael)

The Transfiguration is considered the last painting by the Italy High Renaissance master Raphael. It was left unfinished by Raphael, and is believed to have been completed by his pupil, Giulio Romano, shortly after Raphael's death in 1520....
graced the high altar; it is now in the Vatican pinacoteca. The altar currently displays a copy by Cammuccini of Guido Reni's Crucifixion of St. Peter (also now in Vatican museum).

The last chapel on the left contains a Baptism of Christ, attributed to Daniele da Volterra

Daniele da Volterra

Daniele Ricciarelli , better known as Daniele da Volterra, was an Italy Mannerism Painting and sculpture.He is best remembered for his association, for better or worse, with the late Michelangelo....
, and stucco-work and ceiling frescoes by Giulio Mazzoni

Giulio Mazzoni

Antoniazzo Romano

Antoniazzo Romano, born Antonio di Benedetto Aquilo degli Aquili was an Italy Renaissance painter, the leading figure of the Roman school during the 15th century....
frescoed the third chapel with the Saint Anne, Virgin, and Child.

Dirck van Baburen

Dirck van Baburen

Dirck Jaspersz. van Baburen was a Netherlands Painting associated with the Utrecht School....
, a central figure of the Dutch Caravaggisti

Utrecht School

Utrecht Caravaggism refers to those Baroque artists, all distinctly influenced by the art of Caravaggio, who were active mostly in the Netherlands city of Utrecht during the early part of the seventeenth century....
, painted the Entombment for the Pietà Chapel, which is indebted to Caravaggio's

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, was an Italian people artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily between 1593 and 1610, considered the first great representative of the Baroque school of painting....
example

The Entombment of Christ (Caravaggio)

The Entombment of Christ is a painting by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It was painted for Santa Maria in Vallicella, a church built for the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, and adjacent to the buildings of the order....
. Baburen worked with another Dutch artist, David de Heen in this chapel. The two other paintings, The Mocking of Christ and The Agony in the Garden are variously attributed to either or both of the artists.

The second chapel on the left, the Raimondi Chapel (1640), was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini was a pre-eminent Baroque sculpture and architect of 17th Century Rome....
. It includes Francesco Baratta's "Saint Francis in Ecstasy" and sculptures by Andrea Bolgi

Andrea Bolgi

Andrea Bolgi was an Italian sculptor responsible for several statues in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. Towards the end of his life he moved to Naples, where he sculpted portrait busts....
and Niccolò Sale.

Irish Princes' Tombs

At the high altar are the tombs of Gaelic Chieftains Hugh O'Neill, who fled

Flight of the Earls

The Flight of the Earls refers to the departure from Ireland on 14 September 1607 of Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone and Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell....
Ireland in 1607.

The tombs are normally covered by a carpet. When facing the altar the tombs are on the left about 12 feet from the altar. The inscription on the tomb of Hugh O'Neill is still visible, and reads "Hugonis Principis Onelli".

The inscription on the tomb of Rory O'Donnell, once exposed by raising the carpet, refers also to his brother, Cathbharr, and their elder brother Red Hugh O'Donnell. The tombstone of Hugh O'Neill was recorded in the past as being of greater simplicity: D.O.M. Hic . quiescunt . Ugonis . principis . O'Neill . ossa .

The Tempietto

The Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio is a small commemorative martyrium

Tomb

Donato Bramante

Donato Bramante was an Italian architect, who introduced the Early Renaissance style to Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rome, where his most famous design was St....
, possibly as early as 1502, in the courtyard of San Pietro in Montorio. It is considered a masterpiece of High Renaissance

High Renaissance

The High Renaissance, in the history of art, denotes the culmination of the art of the Italian Renaissance between 1450 and 1527. Because Pope Julius II patronized many artists during this time, the movement was centered in Rome; it had previously been centered in Florence....
architecture.

After spending his first years in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second largest city of Italy, located in the plains of Lombardy. It is the capital in the Province of Milan, as well as the Regions of Italy capital of Lombardy....
, Bramante moved to Rome, where he was recognized by Cardinal Guiliano della Rovere, the soon-to-be Pope Julius II

Pope Julius II

Pope Julius II , nicknamed Il Papa Terribile , was born Giuliano della Rovere. He was Pope from 1503 to 1513. His reign was marked by an aggressive foreign policy, ambitious building projects, and patronage for the arts....
. 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

Classical architecture

Classical architecture is the set of building styles and techniques of Classical Greece, as used in ancient Greece, the Hellenistic period, and the Roman empire....
building. Perfectly proportioned, it is composed of slender Tuscan column

Column

File:National Capitol Columns - Washington, D.C..jpgA column in structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through physical compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below....
s, a Doric entablature modeled after the ancient Theater of Marcellus, and a dome. According to an engraving in Sebastiano Serlio

Sebastiano Serlio

Sebastiano Serlio was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Ch?teau de Fontainebleau. Serlio helped canonize the classical orders of architecture in his influential treatise, "I sette libri dell'architettura" ....
's Book III, Bramante planned to set it in within a colonnaded courtyard, but this plan was never executed.

External links

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.