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Santa Maria Antiqua tra Roma e Bisanzio , Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, Italy. 17 March – 11 September, 2016. 8 December, 2016 – 19 March, 2017. Maria Andaloro, Giulia Bordi, and Giuseppe Morganti. Santa Maria Antiqua tra Roma e Bisanzio . Milan: Electa, 2016. 414 pages, ill. € 50. ISBN: 9788891807762 8891807761. In 2004 Leslie Brubaker made a rather somber joke about the church of Santa Maria Antiqua, saying that it had been the victim of “one hundred years of solitude,” an allusion the fact that, since the discovery of the church in 1900 by Giacomo Boni, its walls had been all but shut to the public.1 Recently, however, the church was the site of a major exhibition, thus ending that long period of isolation. Visitors were finally able to experience and study the medieval paintings, many of which were beautifully explained through a series of videos projected on the walls. The church has a history of hiding, even though it is in a very public and prominent part of Rome—along the northwestern slope of the Palatine Hill, in the southwestern zone of the Roman Forum. The church was first constructed at the end of the fifth century C.E. At least five popes were involved in decorating the church,2 often superimposing the frescoes from their campaign directly on top of previous ones. One famous example of this superimposition is the “palimpsest wall,” with its seven layers of paintings ( Fig. 1 ).3 The painting and repainting might have continued, but in 847 an earthquake destroyed so much of the church that it was abandoned. Ultimately covered by a Baroque church in 1617, the remains of Santa Maria Antiqua were all but forgotten. Scholars knew of the church from descriptions in the Liber Pontificalis , but it remained undiscovered until Boni's turn-of-the-century excavations. Fig. 1. Palimpsest Wall, Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, Italy. Photo by Annie Labatt. Much research and conservation has been underway behind those closed doors since the discovery by Boni. However, the frescoes painted between the sixth to the ninth centuries were relatively unknown, which is ironic since hordes of visitors … |
