Antonio Sangallo and the Construction of the Papal Grottoes

Tomb of Pius XI in the Vatican Grottoes
beneath Saint Peter's Basilica

I gave short shrift yesterday to Antonio Sangallo the younger in my eagerness to get to Michelangleo’s role in the design and construction of St. Peter’s Basilica.  I had mentioned how he had diverted materials and labor from the Basilica to build a palace for himself on the Via Giulia, Rome’s most fashionable street but his time as Capomaestro or chief architect was marked by nepotism and graft as he gave contracts to all his relatives and friends, hiring members of his clique for all the chief positions.  Yet he did make several important contributions to the project,  Despite a mutual loathing between Bramante and the Sangallo clan, he had been hired by Bramante as chief carpenter.  Bramante had recognized the young Sangallo’s genius and Antonio had not disappointed him, devising a unique system of scaffolding to brace Bramante’s massive piers until the concrete set.  When Leo X put Sangallo in charge after Raphael’s death, Sangallo constructed a scale model of the projected Basilica according to his design.  It was perfect in detail and even on a scale of 1:29 it was over twenty feet high in the dome and 23 feet long from front to back.  It cost over 6000 ducats—a parish church could have been built for less.  But it gave—for the first time—a detailed plan of what the finished Church might look like.  In the end, Michelangelo’s revisions and Maderno’s façade would (thankfully) give a very different look to the Basilica but at least now there was a plan even if it would be changed.  Just seeing a model of the Basilica made people think that it might become a reality out of the rubble pile that currently stood on the site. 

      Sangallo made an even more important contribution to the Basilica by raising the level of the floor 12 ½ feet above the level of Constantine’s basilica.  While this altered Bramante’s proportions, and not for the better, it also created the crypt beneath the nave that would become the grottoes of the papal tombs.  (In the 20^th century, the crypt floor would be lowered a meter to give more headroom.)  Despite his elaborate plans, however, actual construction on the basilica would progress little by the time of Sangallo’s death in 1546.  It was just as well as his successor, Michelangelo, wanted to clear the deck and start over.  Michelangelo would develop what his predecessors, especially Bramante, had built but at the same time he would take those elements and integrate them into a design uniquely his own.   

Back to the Saga of Saint Peter's Basilica

Michelangelo's dome from
the Vatican Gardens

You know it has been almost six months since the last posting on the history of Saint Peter’s Basilica.  It is taking as long to tell the story as it did to build the darn thing and like the building, the telling of the story is coming in fits and starts.  All through the sixteenth century it was stop and go as the popes were distracted by other things—like the sack of Rome, the Protestant Reformation,  the Council of
Trent.  And so too with this blog, my mind wanders to other topics, old and new, but now let’s come back to the basilica at least for a while.

      Look at the label’s list on the right hand side of the blog, and scroll down to “Saint Peter’s Basilica” and you can see in the entry for November 6 2011 that we left off the story with the death of Raphael, the hiring of Peruzzi to replace him, and the standstill to progress with Adrian VI and then with the sack of Rome.  So, let’s pick it up there—and here we come to the take-charge master of the works who left his indelible mark, Michelangelo.  

     Well, actually there was an interlude of about ten years or so between Peruzzi and Michelangelo when Antonio da Sangallo was the chief architect.  At this point all that had actually been built were the four piers on which Bramante had planned to construct the dome—the same four piers that stand today at the crossing of the Basilica.  Sangallo strengthened these piers so that a heavier dome—one supported by a large drum—could be built on them.  But most of what Sangallo did was to divert building materials and labor from the  Basilica to the palace he was constructing for himself on the Via Giulia.  That palace stands today as the Palazzo Sacchetti. 

Michelangelo was a superior genius but he never admitted that anyone else could have been in the same league.  He was not about to carry out the plan of some lesser genius—or one whom he perceived to be a lesser genius.  However, he was no fool and recognized that each of the previous plans had certain features that were brilliant.  He totally redesigned the master plan for the Basilica—which can be considered  his work more than that of any other—but he drew on the work of Bramante and Raphael.  He reverted to Bramante’s original idea of a Greek Cross—i.e. with the four arms of the cross of equal length—under a central dome.  And Michaelangelo designed the dome—one of the most elegant in the world—and for centuries the largest. The dome is truly a wonder as it seems to float over the empty space of the central crossing of the Basilica without support.   Unfortunately, due to alterations in the nave and façade by Michelangelo’s successor, Carlo Maderno, the dome is not clearly visible from Saint Peter’s Square but can only be seen from the distance. 

Back to Our Story of Saint Peter's Basilica

Vitrivuian Man, sketch of Leonardo

da Vinci

You know, we left Old Saint Peter’s falling down, Julius II in need of a place to put his tomb—the one he had Michaelangelo working on (see entries of April 19^th and 20^th)—and lots of intrigue going on in Rome.  Lots of intrigue still goes on in Rome, but let’s return to the story of how we moved from Old Saint Peter’s to new Saint Peter’s.  it takes a lot of guts to tear down the monumental basilica over the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, built by Constantine, standing for a thousand years plus, and a symbol of the Catholic world.  Imagine if today Pope Benedict said “Let’s tear down this old basilica and built something modern here…”  Well, it does take a lot of imagination to think of Benedict wanting to do something modern, but only a pope with the guts of Julius II could have done it in his day and do it he did.  And he took heat for it!  After all seven Emperors had been crowned there; one hundred and eighty four popes had presided in the basilica; dozens of saints were entombed in its altars, and unknown numbers of the dead lay beneath its floor.  Julius had a personal architect—Giuliano Sangallo.  When Julius as a Cardinal had gone to France in exile during the papacy of his implacable enemy, the lecherous Alexander VI, Sangallo had accompanied him.   He was sure the job was to be his—but it wasn’t.   A quiet and unassuming architect of no great previous accomplishment was building a small church—a very small chapel actually—the Tempietto, which was astonishing Rome for the perfection of its design.  It won over Julius who hired Donato Bramante to design his new basilica. 

Bramante's Plan for the new Vatican Basilica

     Bramante had come from a family of farmers but showed not aptitude for the plow and did show an aptitude for canvas and brushes and pigments—so he became an artist.  He studied originally in his native Urbino where the court of the Duke, Federigo di Montefeltro, was one of the most spirited centers of Renaissance culture.  From Urbino he moved to Milan where he was introduced to the Florentine genius, Leonardo da Vinci.  The two formed a twenty-year friendship and the influence of Leonardo on Bramante’s philosophy of art is apparent to anyone who compares Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man to Bramante’s designs for the Tempietto and later for his original design for the new basilica.  When Julius saw the design for Saint Peter’s he was overcome by its geometrical perfection. 
     Bramante’s plan was a totally symmetrical plan which would have located the tomb of the Apostle directly beneath a central dome.  It was a curious combination of two types of ancient Roman buildings—the basilica and the temple.  Like the Pantheon, a temple to all the gods (pan theon) it was centrally domed.  Like the Basilica of Maxentius it would be a vaulted hall—or actually the new basilica would be four vaulted halls converging at the papal altar beneath this central dome over the tomb of Saint Peter.   But this new basilica was to leave the ancient monuments in the dust of history—higher, wider, longer than the surviving buildings of ancient Rome.  It is a question if it could even have been built with the engineering materials and skills of the time: it would have been almost  a third larger than the basilica eventually built.  And it was innovative not only in its engineering but in its design.  The altar would be not in an apse, but central, approachable from every side.  (There are several surviving ancient Roman Churches with a central altar—San Stefano Rotondo, Santa Costanza, and San Teodoro to name three.)  The work required a “new” masonry—the “old" masonry of stone with which the great gothic cathedrals had been built would not allow for the vast spans of Bramante’s design.  Bramante carefully studied the ruins of ancient Rome and discovered the lost art of making concrete from crushed volcanic gravel, sand, lime, and broken stone.  This was the magic the architect needed.  Concrete was the material that made the vast barrel vaults possible.  Concrete and brick construction could be faced with marble, granite, and other stone to give the impression of stone masonry but provide a far more flexible building material to bear the weight of the huge vaults and the soaring dome.  This new basilica would be everything Julius dreamed of as a setting for his tomb.  But the work was just beginning and so much would happen in between and Julius—well he lies today in a borrowed vault beneath a monument bearing another pope’s name.  The last will be first and the first last.  But that story is yet to come.      

How the Vatican came to be the Pope's home

When the papacy left Avignon and returned to Rome in 1377 the papal court found the old Lateran palace which had been the official papal residence adjoining the pope’s cathedral, the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, in such ruin that it was not habitable so they took up residence in a warren of buildings adjoining the basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican. You may remember from earlier blogs (January 17 and 18) that Constantine had built basilicas over the tombs of the Apostle Paul (on the Via Ostia) and the Apostle Peter (on the Vatican hill) and that the popes kept a residence at the Vatican for those occasions when they were presiding at ceremonies in that church so that they did not have to journey from the Lateran to the Vatican or return to the Lateran the same day. Innocent III had modernized (well, "modern" for the thirteenth century) the buildings to the north of the basilica and it was here that the popes settled. Well, some of the popes settled, others preferred a variety of palaces around Rome. Paul II Barbo, for example, had rebuilt the residence of the Cardinal Priest of the Basilica of Saint Mark just north of the Capitoline Hill and made it into a splendid renaissance palace. When he was elected pope in 1474, he preferred to remain in his Palazzo Venezia than live in the Vatican and so it served as a papal residence for a number of years, (It also later served as Mussolini’s official headquarters.) Allesandro Farnese, a man who owed his cardinal’s hat to his sister (the so-called Giulia Bella –beautiful Giulia) being the mistress of Pope Alexander VI Borgia, built a magnificent palace –to my mind the most beautiful building in Rome—called the Palazzo Farnese and when he was elected Paul III he too opted to live in this palace even though it was still undergoing its “finishing touches.” This doesn’t mean that the Vatican Palace was being neglected Nicholas V (1447-1455) did a substantial renovation of the older buildings and Alexander VI Borgia constructed new apartments for himself during his reign (1492-1503). Nicholas V’s private chapel was frescoed by Fra Angelico with scenes of the lives of Saints Stephen and Laurence and is—to my mind—the most exquisitely beautiful room in the Vatican Palace—or at least those parts of the palace that we mere mortals get to see. It is a small room that can hold probably no more than ten or twelve people, but the aforementioned frescoes are windows into another world. The Borgia apartment, on the other hand, is a heavy construction—massive and powerful and today houses the Paul VI collection of contemporary (20th century) art. Alexander VI Borgia’s successor, Julius II, despised Alexander and would not live in his apartments so he had apartments of his own constructed directly over them and decorated by Raphael. Like the Borgia apartments, they are today part of the Vatican Museums.
Julius’s uncle, Sixtus IV, (pope 1471-1484) had built the Sistine (named after Sixtus) Chapel between 1473 and 1482. This chapel was built on the site of and to replace an earlier Cappella maggiore (Greater Chapel) which was used for the semi-public papal ceremonies. It apparently was built to the same dimensions of this earlier chapel 134’ by 44’—said to be the dimensions of the temple of Solomon. It would be Julius who would see the decoration of the chapel however, hiring Michelangelo to paint the vault.
Although Paul III Farnese preferred his family palace, he did not ignore his official residence and had the architect Antonio Sangallo the younger—who at the time was serving as the architect of the new Saint Peter’s Basilica that was being built— build the greast reception room—the Sala Regia—and the Pauline chapel in the Vatican Palace. Sangallo also built the Scala Regia to connect the papal apartments with St. Peter’s Basilica. This staircase would later be restored into today’s majestic staircase by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini. (You really do need to go and see all this beauty for yourself.) in the last of the sixteenth century Gregory XIII (reigned 1572-1585) and his successor, Sixtus V (reigned 1585-1590 and one of my favorite popes) built the block of the palace overlooking Saint Peter’s Square where the actual papal apartments are located. This is ironic in as that Gregory had another building project which would result in those apartments sitting empty most nights for several centuries. But more on that in a few weeks. Enough of papal residences. I want to get back to Anti-Catholicism in America, the building of the Vatican Basilica, and those troublesome American nuns that the Vatican wants to “investigate.” Maybe somebody needs to investigate the Vatican. Hmmm.

Today's image is the Diaconal Ordination of Saint Laurence by Fra Angelico, Chapel of Nicholas V