The Unified Church Interior in Baroque Italy: S. Maria Maggiore in Bergamo

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Italy, altarpieces were essentially hybrid entities; greatest in quantity often they were privately commissioned works of art, on the contrary they stood in the public spaces of churches. During the early part of this period similar giving over of public space to the expression of private interests did not strike one as being to create significant problems, and in fact the combination of parts to form a whole had such advantages for the couple parties that it remained in place from one side the end of the seventeenth hundred The selling of rights to the spaces associated with altars was individual of the principal ways for the house of worship to encourage the decoration of its constructions and to raise money for novel construction. Simultaneously, it enabled private patrons to establish records to themselves that not sole glorified their families but also helped to make secure their salvation. During the Counter-Reformation period, however, the private composing of these altarpieces' function began to draw near into conflict with increased clerical rule stemming from the r equirement that religious art play a broad public character both as the Bible of the illiterate and as a stimulus to piety. The sacra conversazione impressed sign showing the Virgin and Child encompassed by saints, was an altarpiece staple through every part of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth This was effective insofar as it catalogued the hallowed figures referred to during masses endowed for these altars, on the contrary it did little either to instruct the viewer or to provide archetypes for emulation; it did not exhibit the saints' actions, nor did it explicate the mysteries of the faith. With the selection of saints determined through the particular proclivities of the individual family responsible for commissioning the altarpiece, the sacra conversazione mark can perhaps be thought of as a pictorial embodiment of the increasing privatization of the mass in the centuries preceding the Reformation. [1] Although like privatization was not cited explicitly as a enigma by any known contemporary source, the mid-sixteenth hundred saw the emergen ce of a widespread desire to create programs coordinating all the altarpieces in a given house of worship around a single concept or narrative, suggesting that the consignment of meeting-house space to private interests was indeed considered worrisome. Adding moment to this movement was its link to a enigma of much longer standing, that of the aesthetic unity of the house of worship space. [2] In addition to determining the bring under rules of altarpieces they underwrote, private patrons also picked their forms to distinguish themselves from their neighbors, to stand apart. The issue was an aesthetic and thematic hodgepodge that demanded correction.

In the late sixteenth hundred a number of famous churches were either renovated or newly built with thematically and sometimes aesthetically unified programs of altarpiece decoration. At s Croce and S. Maria Novella in Florence, for instance, Duke Cosimo promot comprehensive renovations resulting in altar decorations that collectively made up circle of times of Christ's Passion. [3] At the same time, aesthetic unity was achieved in each of these sum of two units examples through the adoption of monumental frames similar in design. Likewise, a thematically and aesthetically coherent circle of time of altarpieces was created for the fresh Venetian church of Il Redentore. [4] At sum of two units new churches in Rome, Il Gesu and s Maria in Vallicella, altarpieces were arranged programmatically to expres the ideals of the Jesuits and the Oratorians respectively. [5] Aesthetic unity does not strike one as being to have been the goal in these sum of two units Roman churches; patrons still culled their own artists. In all these examples, however, the interests of private patrons, who had usually made their chapels into distinct representational environments, the one and the other iconographically and aesthetically, were at least partially subordinated to the impulse to create thematically unified environments. Thematic and aesthetic unity thus could be separated, with the former assuming in these cases greater relative importance than the latter.

Widely separated geographically, these examples must assuredly be representative of a commonly held ideal, nevertheless they are in no way typical. The programs of these churches were carried to completion single because conditions proved uniquely appropriate in each case. In Florence, private chapel owners paid for the renovations, on the other hand the exercise of Cosimo's absolute political power returned their own particular interests insignificant. Without this coercion, many of the private. sponsors of the renovations doubtless would have withdrawn their support. In the Roman examples the churches were fresh and the Jesuits and Oratorians brought to bear sufficient influence to make adherence to their programs a condition of chapel patronage. Patrons agreed to compromise in order to gain the rights to an altar in single of these prestigious new churches. Still, the one and the other orders obviously felt that the choice of artist could be left up to the patrons; aesthetic unity was not as important as thematic coherence in these cases. Finally, the Venetian throw out sponsored directly by the conduct did not require the participation of private patrons, with all their demands for recognition within the space of the house of god This made it possible to create an altarpiece program the one and the other aesthetically and thematically unified. In these examples then, private patrons were either exclud entirely or controll by the agency of a powerful governing body. When that material part was all-powerful, both aesthetic and thematic unity could be achieved. When compromises had to be made, single thematic unity could be ensured