Chiave per la statua di san Pietro- One key for the St. Peter's statue in the Vatican Basilica (original) (raw)

La basilica di San Pietro: rilievi come modelli di conoscenza (XVII e XVIII secolo)

2018

St. Peter’s Basilica has attracted painters and surveyors since the early stages of the construction site, but it was its completion and the start of the «sinisters and various voices» on the dome’s solidity to promote unprecedented aptitude in surveys both to reveal the marvel of its forms and to verify the stability of its structures. Different surveys that take over a century to elaborate: from 1620, when Martino Ferrabosco published his renderings on the basilica, to 1743 when Giovanni Poleni and Luigi Vanvitelli did their surveys for their analysis on its static behaviour and for the restoration of the Vatican dome.

Giovanni Battista Braccelli’s Etched Devotions before the Vatican Bronze Saint Peter

2020

IN THE MID-SEVENTEENTH CENTURY , the artist Giovanni Battista Braccelli (ca. 1584–1650) created an etching of the bronze Saint Peter cult statue at the Vatican surrounded by devotees and votives (fig. 1). This previously unpublished print, titled The Bronze Saint Peter with Votives, offers a detailed representation of the devotional object in its earlymodern location (figs. 2–3): against the northeast pier of the crossing of Saint Peter’s Basilica, where Pope Paul V Borghese (r. 1605– 21) had installed it onMay 29, 1620 (still in situ today). The print details a group of early modern visitors gathered around the sculpture—well-dressed men, women, and children to the left of the composition, and an assortment of humbler lay and religious personages to the right. At the center, two pilgrims with walking sticks in hand and broad-brimmed hats slung over their shoulders approach the foot of the sculpted Saint Peter with great reverence. The first of the two bows down to touch the top of ...

‘St Peter in Volders’ and related base metal figurines resembling the famous statue in the Vatican Basilica

2013

The reappraisal of an old find from Volders near Innsbruck, Austria, prompted new research on a group of base-metal statuettes that are miniature copies of the famous bronze statue of St Peter in the Vatican Basilica in Rome. Their age has been the subject of debate. This paper examined several examples of such statuettes to solve the issue with the help of archaeometric analysis. The analysis of the manufacturing technique and alloy composition provided important clues on the dating of the statuettes and allowed the historical interpretation of the group as a whole.