Santa Maria sopra Minerva

Santa Maria sopra Minerva is a basilica church in Rome. The church, located in the Campus Martius region, is considered the only Gothic church in Rome, and is the city's principal Dominican church.

The basilica gets its name because, like many early Christian basilicas, it was built directly over (sopra) the foundations of a temple dedicated to the goddess Minerva. Behind a self-effacing facade, its arched vaulting is painted with brilliant red ribbing, and blue with gilded stars, a 19th century restoration in the Gothic taste. The basilica is located on the small piazza Minerva close to the Pantheon, in the rione Pigna.

History

Details of the ruined temple to Minerva, built by Pompey about 50 B.C., referred to as Delubrum Minervae are not known. A temple to Isis and a Serapeum may also underlie the present basilica and its former convent buildings, for in 1665 an Egyptian obelisk was found, buried in the garden of the Dominican cloister adjacent to the church. There are other Roman survivals in the crypt. The ruined temple is likely to have lasted until the reign of Pope Zachary (741-752), who finally Christianized the site, offering it to Eastern monks. The structure he commissioned has disappeared. The present building owes its existence to the Dominican Friars, who received the property from Pope Alexander IV (1254-1261) and made the church and adjoining monastery their headquarters before later establishing it in Santa Sabina. The Dominican Order still administers the area today.

Two talented Dominican friars, Fra Sisto Fiorentino and Fra Ristoro da Campi, who had worked on the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, began the present structure in 1280, during the pontificate of Nicholas III. With the help of funds contributed by Boniface VIII, this first Gothic church in Rome was completed in 1370. It was renovated by Carlo Maderno and others, given a Baroque facade, then restored in the 19th century to its present neo-medieval state. The gates are from the 15th century.

Saint Catherine of Siena is buried here (except her head, which is in the church of San Domenico in Siena). Beyond the sacristy, the room where she died in 1380 was reconstructed here by Antonio Cardinal Barberini in 1637. This room is the first transplanted interior, and the progenitor of familiar 19th and 20th century museum "period rooms." The frescoes by Antoniazzo Romano that decorated the original walls, however, are now lost.

The famous early Renaissance painter Fra Angelico died in the adjoining convent, and is buried here also, as is Pope Paul IV and the Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII. Before the construction of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Minerva was the church of the Florentine nation, and therefore it houses numerous tombs of prelates, nobles and citizens coming from that Tuscan city. Curiously, Diotisalvi Neroni, a refugee who had took part in the plot against Piero de' Medici, was buried here in 1482, and was later joined by other members of the family.

The sacristy was the seat of two conclaves. The first, held in the March 1431, elected Pope Eugene IV, the second, in March 1447, Pope Nicholas V.

Michelangelo's Christ the Redeemer sculpture is housed here.

The current Cardinal Priest of the Titulus S. Mariae supra Minervam is English Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor.

Minerva's Pulcino

The *Pulcino della Minerva*, a famous Gian Lorenzo Bernini elephant sculpture, a base supporting one of the eleven Egyptian obelisks in Rome.

In front of the church there is one of the most curious monuments of Rome, the so-called Pulcino della Minerva. It is a statue designed by the Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (and carried out by his pupil Ercole Ferrata in 1667) of an elephant as the supporting base for the Egyptian obelisk found in the Dominicans' garden. It is the shortest of the eleven Egyptian obelisks in Rome and is said to have been one of two obelisks moved from Sais, where they were built during the 589 BC-570 BC reign of a pharaoh identified in different sources as Apries, Waphres (Ουαφρης), Wahibre or Hophra from the twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt. The two obelisks were brought to Rome by Diocletian, during his reign as emperor from 284 to 305, for placement at the Temple of Isis which stood nearby. The Latin inscription on the base, chosen by the pope who commissioned the sculpture to support the obelisk found on the site, Alexander VII, is said to represent that "...a strong mind is needed to support a solid knowledge".

The inspiration for the unusual composition came from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ("Poliphilo's Dream of the Strife of Love"), an unusual 15th century novel probably by Francesco Colonna. The novel's main character meets an elephant made of stone carrying an obelisk, and the accompanying woodcut illustration in the book is quite similar to Bernini's design for the base for the obelisk. The curious placement of the obelisk through the body of the elephant is identical.

The sturdy appearance of the structure earned it the popular nickname of "Porcino" ("Piggy") for a while. The name for the structure eventually changed to Pulcino, the Romanesco (Roman dialect) equivalent of a small or little "chick". This may have been a reference to the comparatively short height of the obelisk or, an obscure reference to the major charity of the Dominicans to assist young women needing dowries, who made a procession in the courtyard every year. The latter were once depicted in a local painting as three tiny figures with the Virgin Mary presenting purses to them.

Major artworks

Aldobrandini Chapel, by Carlo Maderno, Giacomo della Porta and Girolamo Rainaldi
Carafa Chapel with frescoes by Filippino Lippi
Christ the Redeemer (1521) by Michelangelo
Annunciation (1485), by Antoniazzo Romano
The tombs of the Popes Leo X and Clement VII by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger.
Tomb of Paulus IV by Pirro Ligorio (1559)
Tomb of Urban VII
Tomb of Beato Angelico, by Isaia da Pisa (1455)
Tomb of Guillaume Durand, signed by Giovanni di Cosma (1296)
Memorial to Maria Raggi, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1643)
Tomb of Francesco Tornabuoni (1480), one of the best works by Mino da Fiesole

Other churches with this name

In Assisi, another church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva was built in the 16th century within the surviving cella of a late Republican temple of Minerva. Its Corinthian portico still stands.

List of cardinals from Santa Maria sopra Minerva

External links

41°53′53″N 12°28′42″E / 41.89806°N 12.47833°E / 41.89806; 12.47833