Chiesa della Archiconfraternita delle Stimmate di S. Francesco

   Chiesa delle Stimmate di S. Francesco
  (Vasi at work in the Grand View of Rome)

Links to this page can be found in Book 9, Map C3, Day 4 and Day 5, View C7, Rione Pigna and Rione Sant'Eustachio.

The page covers:
The plate by Giuseppe Vasi
Today's view
SS. Stimmate di S. Francesco
Palazzo Strozzi
Collegio Calasanzio
S. Nicola de' Cesarini and Area Sacra
Teatro Argentina
Casa del Burcardo

The Plate (No. 179)

"Roma ha ancora i suoi orrendi e scomodi vicoli nel pi� bell'abitato, e dove il concorso � maggiore, a Campo Marzio, alla Minerva, al Pantheon, a Fontana di Trevi, a S. Andrea della Valle, e dove richieggonsi strade pi� regolari, e pi� spaziose, ivi son rimaste pi� disagiate e pi� oblique e pi� anguste." (Rome still retains its appalling and uncomfortable narrow streets in the very centre of the city where the influx of people is greater, at Campo Marzio, Pantheon, Fontana di Trevi and S. Andrea della Valle. Where spacious and straight streets are more needed, there they are the worst of all). This sentence was written in Principj di Architettura Civile (1781) by Francesco Milizia, an art historian who lived in Rome. Probably Giuseppe Vasi shared Milizia's views because in this 1759 etching he greatly enlarged the very narrow street linking the Pantheon with il Gesù.
The view is taken from the green dot in the small 1748 map below. In the description below the plate Vasi made reference to: 1) Palazzo Strozzi; 2) Palazzo Cesarini; 3) Collegio Calasanzio, once Palazzo Cenci; 4) Palazzo Amadei. The map shows also 5) SS. Stimmate di S. Francesco; 6) S. Nicola de' Cesarini; 7) Casa del Burcardo; 8) Teatro Argentina. The green rectangle indicates the area where ancient temples were found in 1929. The dotted line in the map delineates the border between Rione Sant'Eustachio (left) and Rione Pigna (right).

Today

Views in November 2008: (left) from the same point as in the plate; (right) from the opposite direction

The wishes of Milizia and Vasi were fulfilled in part in the 1880s when a large street (Corso Vittorio Emanuele) was opened to link il Ges� with the Vatican. Palazzo Amadei was demolished and replaced by a much smaller building. Palazzo Strozzi was shortened too. In 1929 it was the turn of Palazzo Cesarini (and part of Collegio Calasanzio) to be pulled down.

SS. Stimmate di S. Francesco

(left) Detail of the fa�ade with the statue of St. Francis by Bernardino Cametti; (right) bell tower

The church was designed in 1714-1721 by Giovan Battista Contini and Antonio Canevari on the site of a previous one which was dedicated to Quaranta Martiri (Forty Martyrs) di Sebaste. It belonged to a brotherhood (Arciconfraternita delle Stimmate di S. Francesco) having the objective of helping the sick and burying the dead. A statue portrays St. Francis in the act of receiving the stigmata. The bell tower is surrounded by buildings and it can be seen only from a great distance.

(left) Interior; (right) rear fa�ade with a coat of arms of Pope Clement XI, who laid the first stone

Giovan Battista Contini was a highly reputed architect when he was asked to design the church, but he soon had a quarrel with the leaders of the brotherhood and the task of carrying on the construction was assigned to Antonio Canevari, a younger architect who eventually left Rome to work in Portugal and in Naples. The interior of the church was in part redesigned by Giuseppe Valadier in 1828-1829.

(left) Altar in Cappella del Crocifisso; (right) large painting by Francesco Trevisani (1719) in the apse in an architectural frame by Giuseppe Valadier

Only Cappella del Crocifisso, one of the six chapels, was decorated in the XVIIIth century. According to the fashion of the time this was done by using precious marbles and elaborate stuccoes.

Palazzo Strozzi

(left) Old entrance; (centre) detail of the original part of the building; (right) Archaeological Museum of Florence: "sistrum", a musical instrument associated with the worship of Isis (Ist century AD), formerly in the collection of Leone Strozzi in this palace

The Strozzi were a family of Florentine bankers whose palace in Florence is a masterpiece of Early Renaissance. The Roman branch of the family bought this building opposite the church in 1649 from the Olgiati for whom it had been designed by Carlo Maderno in the early XVIIth century. The Strozzi had a "Florentine" chapel at nearby S. Andrea della Valle and two farms on the hill of Monte Mario.

Collegio Calasanzio

(left) Collegio Calasanzio; (centre) detail of the corner; (right) a madonnella

Collegio Calasanzio or delle Scuole Pie was a brand new building when Vasi made his etching as it had been erected in 1746. Jos� de Calasanz was a Spanish priest who founded in 1597 in the sacristy of S. Dorotea the first school in Rome which did not require an admission fee. He was buried in S. Pantaleo which after his canonization in 1767 was dedicated also to him. The members of his order are usually known as Scolopi, or Piarists after Scuole Pie (pious schools). Architect Tommaso De Marchis made only one concession to the decoration of the building in the elaborate capitals and in the cornice. The elegant madonnella is a copy of Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola. You may wish to see Piaristenkirche, a very interesting XVIIIth century church of Vienna.

S. Nicola dei Cesarini

Capital from the fa�ade of the church (XVIIth century), now at Torre del Papitto; the mitre which appears on the capital is a reference to Saint Nicholas being Bishop of Myra

This small church is situate in the piazza Cesarini; and had been a parochial church from the XVII. century, until suppressed by Leo XII. At the close of the XVII. century it passed into the hands of its present possessors , who occupy the adjoining house to the left.
Rev. Jeremiah Donovan - Rome Ancient and Modern - 1843
The church was recorded in many medieval documents, in which it was referred to as S. Nicola de' Calcarario, after the "calcararia", the kilns where the marbles of ancient buildings were burned to make mortar, It was thoroughly redesigned in 1611 and 1695. The Cesarini were a very prominent Roman family for many centuries. Genzano was one of their fiefdoms.

Remaining decoration of the church: (left) frescoes portraying saints in the apse; (right) frescoes imitating marbles in a small chapel adjoining the apse

In the garden of the church of S. Nicola ai Cesarini, close to its south wall, are the remains of a circular peripteral temple, with concrete podium and fluted columns of tufa, sixteen in number, covered with stucco and standing on travertine bases, fragments of seven of which have been preserved. The masonry of this structure has been attributed to the fourth century B.C., and it is represented on the Marble Plan. (..) The church has now been demolished, and the remains of both the unidentified rectangular temple beneath it and of the circular temple near it have been exposed to view.
Samuel Ball Platner. Thomas Ashby. A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome - 1929
Palazzo Cesarini and the church were pulled down in 1926-1929 to enlarge the street linking Corso Vittorio Emanuele with Via Arenula and to erect a modern building in their place.

(left) Remains of the old church of S. Nicola dei Cesarini and of temple "A" (the monuments of this archaeological area in the centre of Rome are covered in more detail in a separate page); (right-above) relief portraying Atlas supporting the celestial vault (see the Farnese Atlas) in a modern building near the archaeological area; (right-below) a Roman "forica" (public latrine) behind temple "A"

It was known that the church stood on a Roman temple and that its cloister made use of the columns of a second temple; the project developed by Istituto Romano di Beni Stabili, a major building society, foresaw to show them in the basement of the new palace. Giuseppe Marchetti Longhi, an expert in the topography of Ancient Rome, was asked to monitor the excavations. When he realized that two other temples stood to the south of the known ones in what appeared to be a sacred precinct (Area Sacra), he appealed to the City of Rome and to the Government, not to go on with the planned project, but to create an archaeological area to preserve the temples in situ, because they were a rare evidence of the development of Rome during the Republic.

In the foreground Temple B (circular) and in the background Temple A (former S. Nicola dei Cesarini)

Form and location of the circular temple suggest an identification with the temple of Hercules, but with no degree of certainty. Platner-Ashby
The excavations led to isolating the circular temple and eventually to finding parts of a large statue of a goddess. It is now thought that the temple was dedicated to Fortunae Huiusce Diei, the Fortune of Today, an indication of the importance of good luck in the beliefs of the ancient Romans.
The final set up of the archaeological area was entrusted with Antonio Munoz, the archaeologist of the antiquities of Rome. It is known that Marchetti disagreed with some aspects of the Munoz' reconstruction of the area.
Because there is still uncertainty about the names of the temples they are usually referred to with letters (A, B, C and D). At one point they might have been included in Porticus Minuciae, an area where key commodities were distributed free of charge.

Temporary exhibition at Musei Capitolini: decorative terracotta elements of the pediment of Temple A

Teatro Argentina

(left) Fa�ade: (right) detail of its decoration

The teatro di Torre Argentina takes its name from a neighbouring tower called Argentina from its proximity to the palace of the Card. Bishop di Argentina; is used for comedy and tragedy, and also for the feste di ballo during the Carneval. (..) The Apollo, formerly the Tordinona, is situate near the bridge of S. Angelo; (..) is the handsomest theatre in Rome; (..) and is used for grand operas and for masquerades, during the Carneval. Donovan
In 1731 the Cesarini built a theatre on a site next to their palace. The building was designed by Girolamo Theodoli, but the fa�ade is an 1826 addition by Pietro Holl which reflects the impact of Neoclassicism on traditional baroque subjects (you may wish to compare the two personifications of Fame on the top of Teatro Argentina with those of Fontana di Trevi). It is now a drama theatre, but in the past it was used also for opera buffa.
On February 20, 1816 the premiere of Almaviva by Gioacchino Rossini was a sensational fiasco, but at the second performance the public had a different opinion and Almaviva (later on called Il Barbiere di Siviglia) became one of the best known Italian operas. The same occurred a year later at Teatro Valle for La Cenerentola (Cinderella).
The theatre was commonly called Teatro Argentina and the whole area is similarly named (Largo Argentina, Via di Torre Argentina). According to Vasi, this is due to the fact that a Cardinal Cesarini was for a while the bishop of Strasbourg (France), which in Latin was called Argentorate. When he returned to Rome he put over many windows the inscription "ARGENTINA" and this word in the end prevailed.

Casa del Burcardo

(left) Casa del Burcardo between S. Giuliano dei Fiamminghi and SS. Sudario dei Savojardi; (right) detail of the fa�ade

As a matter of fact the bishop was not a member of the Cesarini family. His name was Johannes Burckardt (italianized in Burcardo) and he arrived in Rome in 1479. He built a compact, tall palace where Italian and German elements are mixed. At his death the Cesarini acquired the building which was modified in the XIXth century. Today it houses a small museum and a library on the history of theatre in Italy.

(left) Courtyard; (right-above) windows; (right-below) entrance

Next plate in Book 9: Monte di Pietà e Banco pubblico.
Next step in Day 4 itinerary: Monastero di S. Chiara.
Next step in Day 5 itinerary: Chiesa di S. Lucia delle Botteghe Oscure.
Next step in your tour of Rione Pigna: Chiesa del Ges�.
Next step in your tour of Rione Sant'Eustachio: S. Andrea della Valle.

Excerpts from Giuseppe Vasi 1761 Itinerary related to this page:

Chiesa delle Stimate di s. Francesco

Era quivi un'antica chiesa dedicata ai XL. ss. Martiri, la quale circa l'anno 1595. fu conceduta alla confraternita delle Stimate; e perch� era molto piccola e cadente, fu rinnovata con magnificenza secondo il disegno prima del Contini, e poi del Canevari. Fra gli altri quadri � molto rinomato quello della Flagellazione alla colonna dipinto dal Cav. Benesiani nella prima cappella a destra: il s. Francesco nell'altare maggiore � del Trevisani, quello nell'ultima di Giacinto Brandi, e le pitture nella volta sono di Luigi Garzi.
....Poco pi� oltre si vede a destra il teatro di Argentina, ed incontro il

Palazzo Cesarini, e chiesa di s. Niccol�

Dalla nobilissima famiglia, che lo possiede, porta questo il nome, ed ancora lo da alla chiesa di s. Niccol�, che li sta in seno, anticamente detta delle calcare, come interpetrano alcuni delle calcare di calce, che ivi si facevano de' marmi del magnifico portico di Gneo Ottaviano console, che quivi era, ornato di colonne con capitelli di metallo.
Fu questa conceduta ai Chierici Somaschi l'an. 1695. in ricompensa di quella, che avevano sul monte Citorio, demolita per la fabbrica della Curia Innocenziana. Incontro a questa fu eretto anni sono il collegio Calasanzio de' chierici Scolopj.