The Arts - Rome - page 696

» San Paolo (c 3−65, b Turkey) Saul the Christian hater became St Paul the travelling evangelist after conver-
sion on the road to Damascus. He was decapitated in Rome during Nero's persecution of the Christians. Along
with St Peter, he's the capital's patron saint. Their joint feast day, a holiday in Rome, is 29 June.
» San Pietro (d 64, b Galilee) One of Rome's two patron saints, St Peter is said to have founded the Roman
Catholic Church after Jesus gave him the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. He was crucified upside down and bur-
ied on the spot where St Peter's Basilica now stands.
» San Sebastiano (d c 288, b France) St Sebastian distinguished himself as an officer in Diocletian's imperial
army before converting to Christianity. Diocletian wasn't amused and had him tied to a tree and turned into an
archery target. He survived, only to be beaten to death.
The Human Form
The human form was central to much Renaissance art, and Michelangelo and Leonardo da
Vinci famously studied human anatomy to perfect their representations. Underlying this
trend was the humanist philosophy, the intellectual foundation stone of the Renaissance,
which held man to be central to the God-created universe and beauty to represent a deep
inner virtue.
This focus on the human body led artists to develop a far greater appreciation of per-
spective. Early Renaissance painters had made great strides in formulating rules of per-
spective but they found that the rigid formulae they were experimenting with often made
harmonious arrangements of figures difficult. This was precisely the challenge that Raf-
faello Sanzio (Raphael; 1483−1520) tackled in La Scuola di Atene (The School of Athens;
1510−11) in the Stanze di Raffaello in the Vatican Museums and the Trionfo di Galatea
(Triumph of Galatea) in Villa Farnesina.
Originally from Urbino, Raphael arrived in Rome in 1508 and went on to become the
most influential painter of his generation. A paid-up advocate of the Renaissance exalta-
tion of beauty, he painted many versions of the Madonna and Child, all of which epitom-
ise the Western model of 'ideal beauty' that perseveres to this day.
Counter-Reformation & The Baroque
The baroque burst onto Rome's art scene in the early 17th century in a swirl of emotional
energy. Combining a dramatic sense of dynamism with highly charged emotion, it was en-
thusiastically appropriated by the Catholic Church. At the time the Church was viciously