Elizabeth Lev is an art historian who teaches, studies, and writes in Rome with a special focus on Renaissance and Baroque art. Her most recent book is The Silent Knight: A History of Saint Joseph as Depicted in Art.
After a long period of decline, the cathedral originally dedicated to Christ the Savior and, centuries later, rededicated in honor of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist (the archbasilica’s Latin name is Archibasilica Sanctissimi Salvatoris ac Sancti Ioannis Baptistae et Ioannis Evangelistae ad Lateranum) saw a resurgence in the Middle Ages.
The greatest strides in the history of western art
The Post-Tridentine Catholic Restoration unleashed a wave of artistic activity well known to European art lovers.
Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI of beloved memory, grew up during one of history’s ugliest moments.
The massive remains of the Colosseum and Pantheon lend the gravitas of antiquity to Rome’s urban proscenium, but it was the Baroque era in the seventeenth century that transformed all of Rome into a stage and it denizens into players.
To a typical secular visitor to many European churches, pulpits might look like errant remnants of an archaic age.
On November 28, 1680, Sir Gianlorenzo Bernini, the “sovereign of art,” died peacefully surrounded by his closest friends and family.
Saint Joseph’s rise to recognition in art took a long time, suited to the patron saint of hard work. Conspicuously absent in paleo-Christian art—he is never featured in early Nativity or Magi scenes—he made his first appearance in the history of art in the fifth century, in the apse of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.
From the earliest mosaics gracing church apses, images of the apocalypse have played an essential role in the history of Christian art.
As the lights dimmed on the Jubilee year of 1600, Caravaggio’s star was on the rise.
While any attempt to return the oft-shunned Renaissance painter Fra Bartolommeo to the public eye should be lauded, Albert Elen, Chris Fischer, Bram de Klerck, and Michael Kwakkelstein deserve special mention for Fra Bartolommeo: The Divine Renaissance. Written as the catalogue to accompany the eponymous exhibition held in the Rotterdam Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen from October 2016 to January 2017, the book not only highlights the technical skill and careful craftsmanship of the artist, it explores the religious nature and significance of his art, something all too often sidelined in major exhibitions.
Art history, which came of age during the secularizing nineteenth century, has spent over a century grappling with the problem of interpreting religious imagery.
To this day, the sixteenth-century artistic crisis in the Catholic Church remains choppy water for the art historian to navigate.