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Papers of the British School at Rome Papers of the British School at Rome http://journals.cambridge.org/ROM Additional services for Papers of the British School at Rome: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The Portraits of the Popes Rt. Rev. Mgr. H. K. Mann Papers of the British School at Rome / Volume 9 / January 1920, pp 159 - 204 DOI: 10.1017/S0068246200005614, Published online: 09 August 2013 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0068246200005614 How to cite this article: Rt. Rev. Mgr. H. K. Mann (1920). The Portraits of the Popes. Papers of the British School at Rome, 9, pp 159-204 doi:10.1017/S0068246200005614 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/ROM, IP address: 128.122.230.132 on 01 Apr 2016 PAPERS OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ROME. VOL. IX. No. 6. THE PORTRAITS OF THE POPES. BY THE RT. REV. MGR. H. K. MANN, D.D. OF late years it would appear that the subject of Papal Iconography The Papa, has been singularly neglected ; nor as far as we are aware has the subject Busts at been at all exhaustively treated in any monograph. Yet if its claim to importance calls for justification, it should suffice to quote the following FIG. I.—PAPAL BUSTS IN THE DUOMO OF SIENA. passage in which J. A. Symonds records the impression made upon him by the busts of the Popes (Fig. i) which adorn] the walls of the Duomo of Siena : ' One most remarkable feature ' he wrote ' of the Duomo of Siena is a line of heads of the Popes carried all round the church above the lower arches. Larger than life, white solemn faces, they lean each from his separate niche, crowned 160 THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ROME. with the triple tiara, and labelled with the name he bore. Their accumulated majesty brings the whole past history of the Church into the presence of its living members. A bishop walking up the nave of Siena must feel as a Roman felt among the waxen images of ancestors renowned in council or in war. Of course these portraits are imaginary for the most part, but the artists have con- trived to vary theii features and expression with great skill.'1 It is admitted that these busts were all formed on four or five models merely for decorative purposes ; and so slight is their artistic or historical value that their removal was once under consideration. Yet if the sight of them could so move the author of the History of the Renaissance in Italy, it is obvious that an inquiry into the authenticity of other series which are of greater authority might produce results of considerable historical significance. For, though the fact does not appear to be generally known, there are in Rome and other cities of Italy several more or less complete series of likenesses of the Popes, which we will examine in order. Papal Por- In the library of the Archivium of St. Peter's in Rome there is a srnau i m " modern series of oil paintings of all those Popes who had at one viumot time been canons of St. Peter's. This collection also is of no particular St. Peter's . value. The portraits of the more recent Pontiffs, authentic it is true, but not striking works of art, may be seen elsewhere, and those of the more remote ones are devoid of any great interest as they have no special claim to consideration on historic or artistic grounds.2 (2) in s. Pier Of more importance is the series in the fine old church of S. Pier in Grado, a few miles outside the city of Pisa. When the ancient basilica (the name of which recalled the tradition of the landing of St. Peter in the neighbourhood) was decorated in the thirteenth century, the scheme included a set of medallions of the Popes. These, extending from St. Peter, certainly to John XIV. (f 985), some ninety-six in all, were placed in the frieze above the columns of the nave, and presented a 1 Sketches in Italy, p. 39, ed. Tauchnitz, 1882. 2 Similarly with regard to such small collections as the series of ten mosaic medallions of Popes in the Church of St. Agnes outside-the-walls. If they have artistic worth they have no historic interest. Much more of the latter have the frescoes in the gallery to the right of the old Vatican library—-frescoes illustrating what Nicholas V., Sixtus IV., Paul V., Pius VI. and Pius VII. did for the Library and for Rome generally ; and much more of the former the series of Popes in the Sixtine chapel. Cf. Steinmann, Die Sixtinische Kapelle, p. 19^. Nor is any historic value to be attached to the series in stucco of the early Popes in the vestibule of St. Peter's. THE PORTRAITS OF THE POPES. 161 series, not, however, consecutive, of portraits of Popes who reigned from the first to the eleventh century. Seemingly in the course of the four- teenth century there were added the portraits of John XXII., FIG. 2.—FRESCO SHOWING PAPAL PORTRAITS IN S. PIER IN GRADO NEAR PISA. Benedict XII. and Clement VI. who reigned from 1305 to 1352. As the style and execution of these frescoes are inferior, they do not contribute much to history or to art (Fig. 2).1 1 Cf. J. B. Supino, Arie Pisana, p. 4 ff. and 257 ff. Firenze, 1904. Figs. 2, 7, 8, 9, 12 are reproduced after illustrations in Mann's Lives of the Popes from blocks kindly lent by the publishers. M 162 THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ROME. (3) in Orioio A complete, but much more recent series exists in the little town of Oriolo not far from Sutri. Its ancient palazzo Was in the year 1671 acquired by Prince Altieri. In that year an Altieri, in the person of Clement X., sat in the chair of Peter (1670-6), and he presented to his nephew copies of the portraits of the Popes in the basilica of St. Paul's outside-the-walls. The Prince enlarged the palace at Oriolp, and built a long gallery especially to receive the portraits. His descendants have continued the series up to our own times. As a whole, this large collection of portraits in oil is in very good condition, though a few of them are fading ; and, after the fire which destroyed St. Paul's in 1823, it was used as one of the sources from which the series in the new Pauline basilica was formed. By the side of each of the portrait busts at Oriolo are inscribed the name of the Pope, the dates of his accession and death, and certain facts regarding his Pontificate taken from the Liber Pontificalis and other authorities. Moreover, though armorial bearings did not come into general use till the twelfth century,1 all the Popes, including St. Peter, are supplied with coats of arms. In like manner, although the ecclesiastical pallium was not known before the sixth century, all the Popes are represented as wearing it. This last fact, together with the fact that Pope Sylvester (314-337) is represented wearing a tiara with one crown,2 would seem to show that the earlier portraits were copied from the lower series in St. Paul's painted by order of Nicholas III. in the thirteenth century.3 It will then be seen that these earlier portraits which, like the rest, are life-sized and well painted, have no more historical value than the series executed by Nicholas. Those after the time of that Pontiff (1277-81) have practically the same degree of authenticity as that possessed by the series in St. Paul's of which we shall speak at length presently.4 (4) in Marino In the little town of Marino in the Alban Hills there is preserved in the ancient palazzo of the Colonna family (now used as the Municipio of 1 The oldest coat of arms known (that of Desiderio, abbot of Montecassino, afterwards Pope Victor III. (1086—7) nas recently been discovered in the older church of S. Crisogono in Rome (Pasini-Frassoni in Rivisia Araldica, 1914, 419 : quoted in Nuovo Bull. Arch- Crist, xxi. (1915). 64). T. A. 2 The Popes did not wear a crown till centuries after the time of Sylvester I. 3 Of this series more will be said in the sequel. 4 Cf. G. Tomassetti, La Campagna Romana, iii. p. 88. THE PORTRAITS OF THE POPES. 163 the town), a collection of oil paintings which give in chronological order life-size portrait busts of all the Popes ' from St. Peter to the reigning pontiff, Gregory XVI. (1831-46).' See Oreste Raggi, Sui Colli Albani e Tusculani (Rome, 1844), p. 230. He says also that the collection was much increased in value in consequence of the fire at St. Paul's (1823). It is in its general characteristics much the same as that at Oriolo, and, like it, derives what importance it has from the fact that it was copied from the series at St. Paul's before it was burnt to the ground.1 At' one time there were in Rome three extensive series of papal (5) in Rome portraits. There was one in old St. Peter's, another in St. John Lateran, and the third, the most famous of all, on which our study mainly turns, in St. Paul's outside-the-walls. Of the series in the old Constantinian basilica of St.
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