Praxiteles
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Some splendid views of King’s College Chapel in Cambridge duringt he singing of Gregorio Allegri’s magnificent setting for Psalm 50, the Miserere mei, composed for the Sixtine Chapel whose exclusive prerogative it was until Mozart hear it while sung on Good friday and copied it out from memory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZL3POaATn8&eurl=http://www.thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/
This Roman version has some excellent shots of Michelangelo’s two Pietà s and of some of the best contemporary pictures from 1630s Roman realist school:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0zzqkNNv0c
Finally, here is the text
Here is a picture indicating where the pllars are at present. They can be seen at either side of the galleries over the statues in the great pillars supportinh the dome. The pair here are seen at the tribune of St. Helen, inventrix of the True Cross:
The antiquity of curtains surrounding the altar may be guaged from a reference to teh same in Saint John Chrysostom ‘s (c.347– c.407) homily on St. Paulu’s Letter to the Ephesians [Patrologia Greca 62, 27-30] who regards the practice as completely Catholic.
In MIlan, however, around the same period, St. Ambrose takes a different view. Here he sees the hanging of curtains and veils around the altar in the Porcian Basilica by Justina, the mother of the emperor Valentinian III, as a distinct sign of Arianism [Patrologia Latina 16, 995].
In the following centuries, in the West, a certain unease developed concern9ing the orthodoxy of curtains surrounding the altar. From the later middles ages they begin to disappear. They survived in Spain down to the XI century when they succumbed to the influences of the Cluniac Reform and Gregory VII (1073-1085).
On the question of canopies, it appares that the earliest representation of a canopied altar is to be found in a mosaci in Thesselonika and dates from ante 600. Praxiteles is trying to track it down and will post an image as soon as it is found.
The Bernward door is of interest to us here because of the detail on the upper left corner of the detail shown: it depicts a canopied altar with its curtains pulled back. We can take it that this represents how all of the altars above would have looked around the year 1015.
And here we have adetail oft he bronze door of Bernward in the West portal of Hildesheim Cathedral, completed in 1015.
And another:
Santa Agatha dei Goti in Rome
This church was the chapel of the Irish College until 1928. If you look closely at the mosaics in the spandrels between the columns, you should be able to make out a whole array of Irish Saints.
@notjim wrote:
Silly to move it, this fragment has lost so much, to loose its location to; besides, the BB is going to be full of this lido and the Browne doorway in Eyre Sq is a lesson in how old entranceways don’t work as freestanding follies. The proposal is appalling, but surely if we are to dream, a clever modern building could incorporate this remnant in an artful and exciting way.
Praxiteles agrees!
Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome:
The High Altar raised in 1123, raised, canopied and approached by steps, the lot screened by a choir as at San Clemente [currently adapted for the use of the Melchite rite].
Here is the Geburts Christi Altar [The Nativity Altar] in the North absidal chapel of Regensburg Cathedral. It was raise between 1410 and 1420. The altar is not square and it is canopied and approached by a step.
Then we have the Betrueger planked before this masterpiece. Note the cube, dropped on the floor and left uncovered. This fashionable arrangement has nothing whatsoever to do with the earlier Christian traditon and is historically unconnected with it. Let us be perfectly clear about this phoney, there is nothing to it vaguely having to do with the altar tradition from about 800-1500 and, by the absence of even the slightest hint of Christian iconography, it is not even vaguely related to Christianity. Anyone who was dope enough to plank this piece of junk before the real thing must have a pretty big ego and is deserving of all the criticism the arrangement invites- I mean it does not even have a smooth surface settling instead for the Fred Flintstone look!
@johnglas wrote:
Prax: That display of magnificence is almost too much; it is a wonderful historical accident that San Clemente is in the charge of the Irish Dominicans – I think it was Prior Mullooly (?) who led the amazing excavations in the lower church. (If anyone has never seen SanC get there next trip!) For all its splendour (and it is splendid) San Marco does need a good restoration to get the full effect of the mosaics.
Am I right in thinkinking that ‘they’ got rid of a baldacchino in St Peter’s Belfast in its recent restoration? I wonder what happened to it and why it could not have been re-erected over the new altar.Yes, it was Fr. Mullooly from Co. longford who excavated San Clemente. This year is the 150 anniversary of the excavation and discovery of the ancient basilica below the present one.
Indeed, the baldacchino in St. Peter’s Belfast has gone the way of all mortal flesh -needlessly and senselessly. This is why ignorant architects/liturgical consultants must be exposed for what they are – chancers!
BTW I am not yet qutite fnished with this pèart of the theme. I have a rather amuisng contrast to post.
