Everything about Santa Maria Sopra Minerva totally explained
Santa Maria sopra Minerva is a
basilica church in Rome. The church, located in the
Campus Martius region, is considered the only
Gothic church in Rome, and is the city's principal
Dominican church.
The basilica gets its name because, like many early
Christian basilicas, it was built directly over (
sopra) the foundations of a temple dedicated to the goddess
Minerva. Behind a self-effacing facade, its arched vaulting is painted with brilliant red ribbing, and blue with gilded stars, a
19th century restoration in the Gothic taste. The basilica is located on the small piazza Minerva close to the
Pantheon, in the
rione Pigna.
History
Details of the ruined temple to Minerva, built by
Pompey about
50 B.C., referred to as
Delubrum Minervae are not known. A temple to
Isis and a
Serapeum may also underlie the present basilica and its former convent buildings, for in
1665 an
Egyptian
obelisk was found, buried in the garden of the Dominican cloister adjacent to the church. There are other Roman survivals in the
crypt. The ruined temple is likely to have lasted until the reign of
Pope Zachary (
741-
752), who finally
Christianized the site, offering it to Eastern monks. The structure he commissioned has disappeared. The present building owes its existence to the
Dominican Friars, who received the property from
Pope Alexander IV (
1254-
1261) and made the church and adjoining monastery their headquarters before later establishing it in
Santa Sabina. The Dominican Order still administers the area today.
Two talented Dominican
friars, Fra Sisto Fiorentino and Fra Ristoro da Campi, who had worked on the church of
Santa Maria Novella in
Florence, began the present structure in
1280, during the pontificate of
Nicholas III. With the help of funds contributed by
Boniface VIII, this first Gothic church in Rome was completed in
1370. It was renovated by
Carlo Maderno and others, given a
Baroque facade, then restored in the 19th century to its present neo-medieval state. The gates are from the
15th century.
Saint
Catherine of Siena is buried here (except her head, which is in the church of
San Domenico in
Siena). Beyond the sacristy, the room where she died in
1380 was reconstructed here by Antonio Cardinal
Barberini in
1637. This room is the first transplanted interior, and the progenitor of familiar 19th and 20th century museum "period rooms." The
frescoes by
Antoniazzo Romano that decorated the original walls, however, are now lost.
The famous early
Renaissance painter
Fra Angelico died in the adjoining convent, and is buried here also, as is
Pope Paul IV and the
Medici popes
Leo X and
Clement VII. Before the construction of
San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Minerva was the church of the
Florentine nation, and therefore it houses numerous tombs of prelates, nobles and citizens coming from that
Tuscan city. Curiously,
Diotisalvi Neroni, a refugee who had took part in the plot against
Piero de' Medici, was buried here in
1482, and was later joined by other members of the family.
The sacristy was the seat of two
conclaves. The first, held in the March
1431, elected
Pope Eugene IV, the second, in March
1447,
Pope Nicholas V.
Michelangelo's
Christ the Redeemer sculpture is housed here.
The current
Cardinal Priest of the
Titulus S. Mariae supra Minervam is
English Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor.
Minerva's Pulcino
In front of the church there's one of the most curious monuments of Rome, the so-called
Pulcino della Minerva. It is a statue designed by the Baroque sculptor
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (and carried out by his pupil
Ercole Ferrata in
1667) of an elephant as the supporting base for the Egyptian obelisk found in the Dominicans' garden. It is the shortest of the eleven Egyptian
obelisks in Rome and is said to have been one of two obelisks moved from Sais, where they were built during the 589 BC-570 BC reign of a pharaoh identified in different sources as
Apries, Waphres (Ουαφρης), Wahibre or Hophra from the twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt. The two obelisks were brought to Rome by
Diocletian, during his reign as emperor from 284 to 305, for placement at the Temple of Isis which stood nearby. The Latin inscription on the base, chosen by the pope who commissioned the sculpture to support the obelisk found on the site, Alexander VII, is said to represent that "...a strong mind is needed to support a solid knowledge".
The inspiration for the unusual composition came from
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ("Poliphilo's Dream of the Strife of Love"), an unusual 15th century novel probably by
Francesco Colonna. The novel's main character meets an elephant made of stone carrying an obelisk, and the accompanying woodcut
illustration
in the book is quite similar to Bernini's design for the base for the obelisk. The curious placement of the obelisk through the body of the elephant is identical.
The sturdy appearance of the structure earned it the popular nickname of "Porcino" ("Piggy") for a while. The name for the structure eventually changed to
Pulcino, the
Romanesco (Roman
dialect) equivalent of a small or little "chick". This may have been a reference to the comparatively short height of the obelisk or, an obscure reference to the major charity of the Dominicans to assist young women needing dowries, who made a procession in the courtyard every year. The latter were once depicted in a local painting as three tiny figures with the Virgin Mary presenting purses to them.
Major artworks
Other churches with this name
In
Assisi, another church of
Santa Maria sopra Minerva was built in the
16th century within the surviving
cella of a late Republican temple of Minerva. Its
Corinthian portico still stands.
List of cardinals from Santa Maria sopra Minerva
1861-1864 Gaetano Cardinal Bedini
1868-1870 Matteo Eustachio Cardinal Gonella
1875-1885 John Cardinal McCloskey
1887-1894 Zeferino Cardinal González y Díaz Tuñón, O.P.
1895-1896 Egidio Cardinal Mauri O.P.
1896-1909 Serafino Cardinal Cretoni
1911-1918 John Cardinal Farley
1919-1922 Teodoro Cardinal Valfre di Bonzo
1922-1926 Stanislas-Arthur-Xavier Cardinal Touchet
1926-1929 Giuseppe Cardinal Gamba
1930-1938 Giulio Cardinal Serafini
1939-1946 Eugène Cardinal Tisserant
1946-1965 Clemente Cardinal Micara
1967-1974 Antonio Cardinal Samoré
1976-1977 Dino Cardinal Staffa
1979-1998 Anastasio Cardinal Ballestrero
2001- Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor.Further Information
Get more info on 'Santa Maria Sopra Minerva'.
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