Bernini’s Colonnade at St. Peter’s Square: A Symbol of Catholic Triumph
SAN PEDRO COLONNADE (BERNINI)
History and Style
The colonnade of St. Peter’s Square was built between 1598 and 1667. It exemplifies the Italian Baroque style, characterized by its Catholic and Counter-Reformation themes.
Spatial Characteristics
- Dynamic Space: Achieved through ellipses, counter-curves, and curves, breaking away from static classical formulas.
- Illusionistic Space: Created through optical effects, perspective, and decoration. Light and lighting play a crucial role in enhancing the theatricality and creating an illusion of infinite space.
- Unitary Open Plan: The single nave, crowned by the dome, contributes to a unified interior. The complex, dynamic, and colorful space is easily comprehensible (diaphanous).
Structural Characteristics
- Classicism and Innovation: While employing classical elements like pillars, columns, and entablatures, the structure innovates with a wavy wall incorporating convex and concave shapes.
- Decorative Columns: The giant, composite columns attached to the wall serve a purely decorative function. They combine Ionic (columns) and Corinthian (acanthus leaves) orders.
Conceptual Characteristics
- Ideological Context: Reflects the prevailing noble ideology in Catholic Europe, contrasting with the rising bourgeois class in Protestant countries. Art served as propaganda, with artists acting as messengers for their respective ideologies.
- Integration of Arts: While integrating all art forms, architecture takes primacy. The design expresses the pessimistic, realistic, and theatrical sentiment of 17th-century art.
Type of Plan and Interior Space
- Oval Plan: The oval shape, with its central keystone and longitudinal axis, creates multiple viewpoints and surprise effects, enhancing the theatricality. The colonnade encloses the ellipse and connects to the church through inclined wings.
- Portico: Composed of four rows of Doric columns with an Ionic entablature, the 296 columns create a seemingly endless forest, offering diverse perspectives and separating the square from the exterior without a complete break.
- Interior Space: The colonnade forms an interior space for walks, playing with light and shadow. It serves as a liturgical and ceremonial space.
Exterior Space
- Square Design: The square’s first section is defined by straight, slightly convergent arms, angled to accommodate the uneven ground. These arms then transition into a large ellipse, centered around an obelisk and flanked by two fountains.
- Classical Elevation: Combines longitudinal and vertical elements (obelisk, colonnade, dome) with geometric shapes (ground). Multiple axes, including vertical and horizontal, create a dynamic composition.
Parallel Elements
- Ionic Columns: The continuous balustrade atop the entablature is supported by Ionic columns and adorned with a collection of saint statues.
- Curvature: The curvature of the Doric colonnade, based on a parallel ellipse, prevents a complete view of the entire structure.
Decorative Elements
- Statues, fountains, ground lines, and the obelisk contribute to the decorative richness of the space.
Significance
:
· Puerto of Salvation for Christianity.
· Triumph over paganism and heresy, symbolized by the obelisk, statue of the ancient tradition that the church takes. Symbol of ancient wisdom, pagan, which is wrapped by the church.
· The womb as place where humans grow before birth to eternal life, well, earthly life is the gestation for which leterna saccedeix after death.
· There are two sources of baptism and forgiveness of sins: the symbols of absolute power of divinity, its infinite capacity for forgiveness> Myths and religious themes (saints, martyrs). · The columns symbolize the arms of a Christian as hosts in their yes pilgrims: liturgical sense. It also symbolizes the leading role of the church and the paternalistic nature of the Counter.· Lobelisc symbolizes the triumph of Catholicism over protestanisme
· Functional in planning ordering and its construtucions-> planificaió erbanística Rome. Baroque architecture was concerned not only buildings but also the streets, squares and gardens. Needs to get on durbanisme teatralista perfectly the spirit of the time.
Function:
· The role of St. Peter’s Square was to provide access worthy of a category of their church headquarters. Therefore has a symbolic function so as utilitarian, people receive the maximum possible.
· The work has a didactic purpose and propaganda, both true Faith, as the image stability of the ecclesiastical institution. Enhances the papacy and a sample dinefabilitat on faith-> manifest the greatness of the church for impressive monuments.
· Do I need to move the feelings: constructed in the period of the Counter. MODELS:
Olympic Theatre Vincent
Piazza del Campidoglio (trapezoidal shape)
San Andrés del Quirinale
(NOTE: The colonnade Sp includes the highlights of the Baroque: a very functional, full of symbolism and characterization sets a bit.)
(The style characteristic of Bernini is summarized as follows:
A very functional, the square should be useful.
A strong symbolism
A decorated to welcome the faithful.)