What do the Pantheon & St. Ivo Have in Common?

I've just discovered that Borromini reprised the Pantheon's ancient stepped-ring dome in his c.1650 charming Baroque design of St. Ivo.

It's not something one readily notices from street level.

But, when photographing the dome of the Pantheon from the roof of a building on the Piazza della Rotonda, I captured this image of Borromini's delightful, fanciful corkscrew cupola atop St. Ivo in the near distance.

Large-as-life ... stepped rings on the dome beneath the bell tower!

More Exhibits Worth A Trip

Here's info on two more summer exhibitions, one in Madrid, one in Sydney; plus two shows to plan for: Washington DC in the Fall, and Boston in 2011.


SYDNEY - Art Gallery of New South Wales
Victorian Visions
20 May - 29 August, 2010

Victorian Visions presents an impressive collection of 45 paintings, watercolors, drawings and sculptures by some of the luminaries of Victorian art, including works by Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Poynter, Watts and Waterhouse. This is the first time that many of these works have been seen in Australia.

The prosperity of the Victorian era (1837-1901) transformed the British art world, creating a community of artists who were free to create paintings that depicted powerful stories from ancient history and contemporary life with a new richness of color and wealth of detail. Many of the works in the exhibit are superb examples from these significant artists, including the impressive 2.6-metre tall painting Marianne by J W Waterhouse; Holman Hunt’s Il Dolce Far Niente; Richard Redgrave’s The Tempstress; and Leighton’s Athlete Struggling with a Python, long recognized as the seminal work in British new sculpture.

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MADRID - Residencia de Estudiantes

Una casa-un palacio

22 May - 25 July, 2010

Una casa-un palacio is an exhibition featuring the works referred to by Le Corbusier in a lecture he gave in Madrid in 1928. The exhibit shows how Le Corbusier’s priciples of design confronted the rational and optimal resolution of technical, functional and economic problems, without forgetting beauty. The exhibition includes a selection of photographs and original plans of Le Corbusier’s works, projects, paintings and pieces of furniture, dated around the year 1928, as well as a number of photographs, letters and documents.

Domestic architecture is represented by Villa Cook, Villa Stein and two houses at Weissenhof in Stuttgart, and the Palace of the League of Nations project in Geneva represents institutional architecture. Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (1887-1965), better known as Le Corbusier, was a heroic figure from the history of architecture. Considered by many “The Architect” of the 20th century, Le Corbusier has all the features that define Modern architecture.

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WASHINGTON, DC - The Phillips Collection
Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Phillips
September 11, 2010 - January 16, 2011

Illustrating its unconventional approach to displaying art, The Phillips will present loosely themed groupings of some of its own masterworks plus important works from Oberlin College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum. Half of the 24 paintings and one sculpture on loan from the Allen are old masters, dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries. They include rare works by painters of the British, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Italian, and Spanish schools.

Included among the old masters will be one of the most important examples of northern baroque painting in the United States, Hendrick ter Bruggen’s Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene (1625); The Fountain of Life, a superb 16th-century painting probably painted in Spain after a work by Jan van Eyck; and Joseph Wright of Derby’s night scene Dovedale by Moonlight (c. 1784–85). Oberlin’s modern holdings include works by Alberto Giacometti, Barnett Newman, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Rothko.

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BOSTON - Boston Athenæum
Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey
February 9 - June 3, 2011

The imaginary world of artist and author Edward St. John Gorey (1925-2000 maintains a delicate balance between the hilarious and ominous uncertainty.

Gorey’s love of literature and the ballet, and his off-beat and ironic sense of humor, resulted in a sardonic and witty oeuvre; this exhibition explores the diversity of his art through original pen and ink illustrations, preparatory sketches, unpublished drawings, and ephemera.

The exhibit includes roughly 180 objects, including selections from numerous well-known Gorey publications. While his Edwardian-inspired images appear simple, the pen work is often complex.

In Restauro

And speaking of closed…

We’ve recently returned from a photo-shoot in Rome, in preparation for an upcoming Jane’s Smart Art Guides virtual tour title: The Fountains of Rome.

It’s definitely a good thing that Rome's monuments are being maintained, but what an irritation it is to find the very thing you’re there to see ensconced behind scaffolding!

We found the all-important Fountain of Moses “in restauro”.

Note that the image of the fountain has been reproduced on the scrim. This is something the Italians have been doing for some time now, so that the monument under restoration remains (sort of) visible. More recently, however, the siren-song of ad revenue has raised its ubiquitous head and the decorative scrims now inevitably sport some commercial message or another. The fact that this ad block is still blank suggests that the scaffolding has only recently gone up. Given the pace of things Italian, Moses could still be up to his neck in scaffolding this time next year.

The Fontana dei Tartarughe (Turtles Fountain), in the lovely little Piazza Mattei, was also fenced off for “lavoro”. Fortunately Michael has become quite adept at capturing images through barriers!

It looked pretty well finished– save for an empty red plastic bucket and scrub broom left in the basin -- so there’s a good chance that the fencing is down by now, with water flowing once again.

Lacoste is helping to pay for the restoration of a building on Piazza di Spagna.

Architectural clues tell the story

Just back from Rome. Glad to be home, but ... ah, Rome.

I continue to be fascinated by the visual cues to its history ... if you just know what to look for.

One thing I'd never noticed before, something I think almost everyone misses, in the Piazza di Trevi:

When facing the fountain, one's back is to an enclosed medieval portico. But if you turn around and give it a careful look, the distinct lack of symmetry in the facade gives clues to its story.

The original open portico was built in the late 13th/early 14th century, functioning as a sheltered extension of the piazza. It was enclosed in the late 17th century because it was thought to constitute a public nuisance ... its shadowy recesses providing cover for unsavory types bent on committing unsavory acts.

The portico was built with materials pilfered/salvaged from ancient structures. Use of granite columns and Ionic capitals of different sizes meant that the short entablatures had to be set in at different heights. Because of the scale differences, the spacing between the columns is uneven.

As a result of a 17th C renovation, the windows of the apartments on the floors above are placed somewhat symmetrically in relation to each other -- but there was no way to line them up with the irregular colonnade below.

Nonetheless, despite this visual dissonance, flying in the face of all that is architecturally holy, the facade has a charming stability. It will be still standing long after I'm not!

Baroque: The First International Style

If you’ll be in London between now and July 19th, try to get to the V&A to see their special exhibit, 1620-1800 Baroque – Style in the Age of Magnificence.

Baroque was the first artistic style to have a significant global impact. It spread from Italy and France to the rest of Europe, and then was carried to Africa, Asia, and Latin America by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and other European colonists, missionaries and traders. As European communities were established, craftsmen, artists and architects traveled and settled around the world. Trade in luxury goods and the distribution of art prints furthered the global dissemination of Baroque style.

Art Daily Newsletter reports today that “The magnificence and splendour of Baroque, one of the most opulent styles of the 17th and 18th centuries, is the subject of the V&A’s spring exhibition. The exhibition will reflect the complexity and grandeur of the Baroque style, from the Rome of Borromini and Bernini to the magnificence of Louis XIV's Versailles and the lavishness of Baroque theatre and performance."

Displays cover architecture, furniture, silver, ceramics, painting, sculpture, and textiles. Abnd will explore Baroque in performance and the theatre; the public city square; religious spaces including St Peter’s Basilica in Rome; and secular spaces including Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles.

Among the roughly 200 objects on display will be religious paintings by Rubens and Tiepolo. Of particular interest to anyone who has been to Our Lady Cathedral in Antwerp is an oil sketch of the center panel of Descent from the Cross, the huge altarpiece Rubens painted for the Arquebusier Guild, which is still magnificently on view in that remarkable gothic edifice.

Mark Jones, Director of the V&A said: “Baroque is one of the most exuberant and dazzling design styles there has even been, an expression of European power and magnificence in the 17th and 18th centuries. Our exhibition will be the first to examine all the elements of Baroque including architecture, art and design and will look at how it established itself through Europe and then internationally as European power grew overseas.”

Grand Canal Gets 4th Bridge, Finally

VENICE - Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s new Venetian bridge has been taking a beating from the critics. Focusing largely on its high cost, the local government has decided not to officially inaugurate it on September 18 as planned.

The first bridge constructed in Venice in 125 years, it connects the train station to the vehicular area of Piazzale Roma. It represents a decided break with the traditional architecture of the city.

An exquisitely historic thoroughfare, the the Grand Canal is lined with ancient palaces. Among them are the Ca’ Rezzonico, Ca’ d’Oro, Ca’ Foscari, Palazzo Barbarigo and the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, which houses the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The churches along the canal include the basilica of Santa Maria della Salute. Centuries-old tradition such as the Historical Regatta take place every year along the Canal.

The famous stone Rialto Bridge that stands today was built in 1591, but was preceded by, first, a pontoon bridge erected in 1181, then a timber bridge built in 1255. For centuries this was the only bridge crossing over the Grand Canal. In the 1800s two more bridges, the Ponte degli Scalzi and the Ponte dell’Accademia, were built. There’s a nice little history of the Rialto Bridge on Wikipedia.

During the long period of construction, Calatrava's bridge project went though numerous structural changes because of the mechanical instability of the structure, and the excessive weight of the bridge which would cause the bank of the canal to fail. Over 10 years the project was inspected by at least eight different consultants, and the cost grew to more than three times original projections.

Santiago Calatrava Valls (b 1951) is an internationally recognized, award-winning Spanish architect, sculptor and structural engineer. His early career was dedicated largely to bridges and train stations, and his style has been heralded as bridging the division between structural engineering and architecture. Calatrava is currently designing the future train station at Ground Zero in New York City. He has also designed three bridges that will eventually span the Trinity River in Dallas. Construction of the first bridge, named after donor Margaret Hunt Hill, has been repeatedly delayed due to – once again — high costs. If and when completed, Dallas will join the Dutch county of Haarlemmermeer in having three Calatrava bridges.

"Rafael Moneo has done something very odd, even unorthodox, to the Prado, Madrid’s world-renowned city-centre art gallery,” The Guardian newspaper reported in an article dated May 1, 2007. Over the past five years, the architect has overseen construction of a major new extension to the 18th-century neoclassical building that is surprisingly serious and well-crafted. “Flying in the face of 21st-century orthodoxy, he has avoided the temptation to design an ‘iconic’ (in other words, showy) gallery that might have rivaled Frank Gehry’s phantasmagorical Bilbao Guggenheim,” said the London newspaper.

"Those 'cool-seekers', as Madrid guidebooks have it, who are hoping for an all-singing, all-dancing extension to the Prado may well be disappointed by Moneo's quietly heroic work. Here, an architect of the first order has chosen to let the art that will be on display steal the show. What he has created over long years is a building of immense skill, craft, solidity and intelligence, which redefines a part of Madrid's city centre and makes the Prado itself a far more immediate gallery than it has been for some while."

The expansion was sorely needed. A few years ago I had the unpleasant experience of waiting in a v-e-r-y slow-moving line for upwards of an hour, outside -- in the pouring rain -- while their seriously inadequate and decidedly officious post-9/11 security efforts were exerted -- one visitor at a time – in a tiny log-jam of a foyer. Once inside, the experience was absolutely worth that discomfort, but how lovely I imagine it will be now that the space -- and undoubtedly the security process – have been enhanced. I so enjoy the sense of luxury about Madrid and about the Prado -- that dreary cattle-call entry was disappointingly unwelcoming and incompatible with that sense of elegance.

Seeing ancient structures as they were

"The aqueducts had to drop the width of a finger every 100 yards -- any more and the flow would rupture the walls; any less and the water would lie stagnant ...

Their greatest glories, such as the triple-tiered bridge in southern Gaul, the highest in the world, that carried the aqueduct of Nemausus, were frequently far from human view. Sometimes it was only the eagles, soaring in the hot air above some lonely mountainscape, who could appreciate the true majesty of what men had wrought. " Pompeii, by Robert Harris

As isolated as it was then, these days the Pont du Gard attracts well over a million visitors a year! I am often struck by how hard it is for us to imagine the original context of historic sites while one's senses are being assaulted by the jostle of fellow tourists, the babel of languages, the din and smell of tour buses.

Parenthertically: This speaks to one of the benefits of audio guides: Headphones help blockout distracting sound, and an engaging narrator can bring the original context into the present, and convey the true meaning of the site.

According to Wikipedia, the Pont du Gard was designed to carry water across the small Gardon river valley. It was part of a nearly 50 km (31 mi) aqueduct that brought water from springs near Uzès to the Roman city of Nemausus (Nîmes). The full aqueduct had a gradient of 34 cm/km (1/3000), descending only 17 m vertically in its entire length and delivering 20,000 cubic meters (44 million gallons) of water daily. http://www.pontdugard.fr/index.php?langue=GB

How hard it is for us to apprehend the magnitude of the accomplishments of Roman engineers! The aqueduct was constructed entirely without the use of mortar, probably during the 1st Century. The stones – some of which weigh up to 6 tons – are held together with iron clamps.

And still it stands! In 1998 the Pont du Gard was hit by a major flood which caused widespread damage in the area. The road leading up to the bridge and neighboring structures were badly damaged, but the aqueduct itself was not seriously harmed.