Italy Impressions 2: Santa Maria Maggiore
"The basilica was rapturous with beauty, as breathtakingly lush as a rain forest before the loggers begin their work." Thoughts and photos.
The bus dumped us in the plaza, our teeth still chattering from the hurried, slaloming trip through Rome traffic. Google maps said the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore was that immense pale building with a bell tower, and traffic circle in front. From a distance, it looked more like a city hall, but what did I know?
I submitted my backpack to the security outside. Then, instead of admiring the portico, fumbled under its roof to pull a tee shirt on over my tank to hide my obscene shoulders. My first impression inside was of an aging man in an ill-fitting blazer, staring at me with the assessing eyes of my mother who used to scream at my sisters, “Those shorts are too short. Wipe that make-up off. You’re not leaving the house looking like that.”
But then we were in. Dwarfed in an enormous center aisle lined with giant columns which drew your eyes forward to the apse, then pulled them up to a gilded coffered ceiling glinting with light from the windows on each side which also illuminated a series of fifth century mosaics running the length of the nave. The floor itself was extraordinary with its geometrical tiles and rare, veined marbles in a universe of colors.
Mass was being celebrated, and incense thickened the air that oscillated, too, in the metal tubes of a pipe organ. A choir sang in the apse. A priest chanted in his aging breaking voice. We couldn’t go very far forwards until after the service, but we wandered through several chapels off to the side, added, I think, centuries later during the Renaissance and filled with paintings, carved wood, sculptures showing off their rounded limbs. The basilica was rapturous with beauty, as breathtakingly lush as a rain forest before the loggers begin their work. Only our modesty was out of place.
I wanted to touch everything, stroke. The tiles on the floor were slightly uneven so I secretly scuffed my feet across them. They were probably cool. Red-faced and sweating under my PP2 mask, I pictured lying down on them. Instead I stared at the mosaics, tried to make them out. Other tourists passed among the columns, usually staring up, too. Some women had weird blue shawls covering their obscene shoulders. Others, with equally naked shoulders—and knees!— had somehow managed to escape the inquisitors.
Every now and then there’d be a statue or icon of Mary, and I’d pause, not to examine their beauty, but marvel at the person kneeling in front of them with belief and wonder naked on their faces. Praying, they were so still, cocooned among the chaos that I wanted to be them. Instead I snapped discrete pictures that didn’t capture anything.
There was so much. Too much. It was impossible to see, digest a place which had no focus, but was a more or less harmonious accumulation of styles, of details, every centimeter majestically adorned. Why would you try to?—capture it? Know the history of it all? There were big name artists like Michelangelo, Bernini, not to mention the successive artisans who anonymously came and went.
I can’t wear my glasses with my mask, so squinted at the squiggly letters in the guidebook to learn more. Which I promptly forgot. There was also the itinerary our friend David had given us with detailed notes. Soon, the printout was wrinkled and smudged. Neither said anything about the money that made this glory possible. The empires that collected it. All the workmen who produced it. I wondered what it was like to be part of a project that could go on for lifetimes.
Our apartment building in Paris has been a construction site for months. First the roof was getting replaced, then an elevator put in which meant chopping up steps. So many strangers wander through. There were architects then planners and city officials. The ones who came to demolish bits, and carry it away. Then the many who brought things in and built. Then electricians. And painters. More inspectors. It seems eternal but it’s been barely a year. Fresh out of college, I used to sand drywall. Smear everything with a cheap beige paint.
In the Basilica, I imagined men up near the distant ceiling on scaffolding, hoping it didn’t give out, peeing into a bucket. Or off the side. God knows, as they glued the mosaic, later installed the coffered ceiling. They were there, too, on their hands and knees smearing ciment, carefully placing the tiny tiles on the floor. Every few centuries, another round followed. Always adding more bling.
I thought of Trump and his gold toilet, house cats who leave dead mice on your pillow. The Gauls in their time who nonchalantly displayed the heads of their enemies over the lintels of their homes. After each Roman victory, vanquished enemies and the chests of gold and silvers extracted from them, were paraded through the streets, princes, kings, elephants, Cleopatra’s sister. The wealth of Rome grew exponentially along with their exploding empire.
Mary Beard, in her book, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, said their coffers were so full that Roman townspeople didn’t have to pay tax anymore. The senators pondered what to do with their spoils. Sometimes they gave grain stipends to their citizens. Sometimes built a new sports stadium, theater, Senate building, a nice new temple for someone. There were more wars to wage. Pensions to give to the soldiers so they wouldn’t revolt.
Consuls of the Republic gave way to emperors. Venus and Jupiter gave way to the Trinity of Christian gods. The empire, though, remained, along with its fabulous wealth. And the theatrics it permitted. After Constantine I (272-337) was converted to Christianity, and imposed it as a state religion, the once obscure popes were rich beyond belief. Shoring up territory. Building monumental cathedrals. By 432 when the first stones of Santa Maria Maggiore were laid over the foundation of another church, over the traces of an even more ancient home, they were developing a serious power base and their ambitions, pride, wealth, were already evident. Consumption was more and more conspicuous each time the building was restored, renovated, extended. Standing in the midst of all that gold, I didn’t even wonder if it was a monument to Mary or to men. A referent to power.
But because it was so beautiful, each element was also itself. What is a tile but a bit of clay with glazing? That stone is merely part of a column holding up a building which like others is nothing but a roof and walls protecting the interior from the elements. The sculptors, who were no doubt grateful for their paychecks because somebody had to pay the bills at the workshop, still aimed for pure beauty. So I finally abandoned any attempt to grasp particulars, to seize on facts and names or dates, see clearly, instead let it all sweep over me like a fire.
I left dazed, emptied out, consumed. We made our way to the nearby church on our agenda, but it was closed for the eternal Roman lunch. That reminded us that we, too, needed restoring. So we went in search of a meal in the burning ocher city on the way to our next stop, San Clemente.
More soon!
Until next time…
xoxo K