San Giovanni dei Fiorentini | |
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Basilica di San Giovanni Battista dei Fiorentini | |
![]() The façade of San Giovanni | |
![]() Click on the map for a fullscreen view | |
41°53′59″N12°27′54″E / 41.8997°N 12.465°E | |
Location | Rome |
Country | Italy |
Denomination | Catholic Church |
Tradition | Latin Church |
Website | sangiovannibattistadeifiorentini |
History | |
Status | minor basilica titular church regional church |
Architecture | |
Architect(s) | Giacomo della Porta Jacopo Sansovino |
Architectural type | Church |
Style | Baroque |
Groundbreaking | 1523 |
Completed | 1734 |
Clergy | |
Cardinal protector | Giuseppe Petrocchi |
The Basilica of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini ("Saint John of the Florentines") is a minor basilica and a titular church in the Ponte rione of Rome, Italy.
Dedicated to St. John the Baptist, the protector of Florence, the new church for the Florentine community in Rome was started in the 16th century and completed in the early 18th, and is the national church of Florence in Rome.
It was lavishly decorated with art over the 16th and 17th centuries, with most commissions going to Florentine artists.
Julius II's successor, the Florentine Pope Leo X de' Medici (1513-1521), initiated the architectural competition for a new church in 1518 on the site of the old church of San Pantaleo. Designs were put forward by a number of architects, among them Baldassare Peruzzi, Jacopo Sansovino, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and the painter and architect Raphael. The dominant initial ideas were for a centralised church arrangement. [1]
Sansovino won the competition but the building construction was subsequently executed by Sangallo and Giacomo della Porta. [2]
In 1559, Michelangelo was asked by Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Tuscany, to prepare designs for the church and he presented a centralised church arrangement but this was not adopted. [3]
The main construction of the church was carried out in 1583-1602 under the architect Giacomo della Porta based on the Latin cross arrangement. Carlo Maderno took over from 1602 to 1620, and directed construction of the dome and the main body of the church. However, the façade, based on a design by Alessandro Galilei, was not finished until 1734. [4]
In 1623-24 Giovanni Lanfranco produced paintings for the Sacchetti chapel. [5]
In 1634, the Baroque painter and architect Pietro da Cortona was asked by the Florentine nobleman Orazio Falconieri to design the high altar. [6] Drawings for the altar and its setting and a model were prepared but the project was not carried out. Cortona's ideas for the choir included windows hidden from the view of the congregation that would illuminate the altarpiece, an early example of the Baroque usage of a "hidden light" source, a concept which would be much employed by Bernini. Some twenty to thirty years later, Falconieri resurrected the choir project but gave the commission to the Baroque architect Francesco Borromini, who changed the design to allow for the burial of Orazio's brother, Cardinal Lelio Falconieri. After Borromini's death in 1667, the work was completed and partly modified by Cortona and, on his death in 1669, by Ciro Ferri, Cortona's pupil and associate. [7]
Francesco Borromini is buried under the dome. [9]
Carlo Murena, architect [10]
Francesco Borromini, byname of Francesco Castelli, was an Italian architect born in the modern Swiss canton of Ticino who, with his contemporaries Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Pietro da Cortona, was a leading figure in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture.
Sant'Andrea della Valle is a minor basilica in the rione of Sant'Eustachio of the city of Rome, Italy. The basilica is the general seat for the religious order of the Theatines. It is located at Piazza Vidoni, at the intersection of Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Corso Rinascimento.
Ciro Ferri was an Italian Baroque sculptor and painter, the chief pupil and successor of Pietro da Cortona.
Alessandro Maria Gaetano Galilei was an Italian mathematician, architect and theorist, a member of the same patrician family of Galileo.
Giovanni Lanfranco was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.
Carlo Maderno (Maderna) was an Italian architect, born in today's Ticino, who is remembered as one of the fathers of Baroque architecture. His façades of Santa Susanna, St. Peter's Basilica and Sant'Andrea della Valle were of key importance in the evolution of the Italian Baroque. He is often referred to as the brother of sculptor Stefano Maderno, but this is not universally agreed upon.
The Accademia di San Luca is an Italian academy of artists in Rome. The establishment of the Accademia de i Pittori e Scultori di Roma was approved by papal brief in 1577, and in 1593 Federico Zuccari became its first principe or director; the statutes were ratified in 1607. Other founders included Girolamo Muziano and Pietro Olivieri. The Academy was named for Luke the Evangelist, the patron saint of painters.
Carlo Fontana (1634/1638–1714) was an Italian architect originating from today's Canton Ticino, who was in part responsible for the classicizing direction taken by Late Baroque Roman architecture.
Francesco Barberini was an Italian Catholic Cardinal. The nephew of Pope Urban VIII, he benefited immensely from the nepotism practiced by his uncle. He was given various roles within the Vatican administration but his personal cultural interests, particularly in literature and the arts, meant that he became a highly significant patron. His secretary was the antiquarian Cassiano dal Pozzo who was also a discerning patron of the arts. Francesco was the elder brother of Cardinal Antonio Barberini and Taddeo Barberini who became Prince of Palestrina.
Santa Maria in Vallicella, also called Chiesa Nuova, is a church in Rome, Italy, which today faces onto the main thoroughfare of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and the corner of Via della Chiesa Nuova. It is the principal church of the Oratorians, a religious congregation of secular priests, founded by St Philip Neri in 1561 at a time in the 16th century when the Counter Reformation saw the emergence of a number of new religious organisations such as the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), the Theatines and the Barnabites.
The Via Giulia is a street of historical and architectural importance in Rome, Italy, which runs along the left (east) bank of the Tiber from Piazza San Vincenzo Pallotti, near Ponte Sisto, to Piazza dell'Oro. It is about 1 kilometre long and connects the Regola and Ponte Rioni.
Santi Luca e Martina is a church in Rome, Italy, situated between the Roman Forum and the Forum of Caesar and close to the Arch of Septimus Severus.
The Palazzo Falconieri is a palace in Rome, Italy formed in the seventeenth century as a result of remodelling by the Baroque architect Francesco Borromini. It is the home of the Hungarian Academy Rome, since its foundation in 1927. It is located between Via Giulia and Lungotevere, with entrances to both; it is near Palazzo Farnese and a few houses down and across Via Giulia from the church of Santa Caterina della Rota in the Rione of Regola. From 1814, it was occupied by cardinal Joseph Fesch, Napoleon's uncle.
Italian Baroque art is a term that is used here to refer to Italian painting and sculpture in the Baroque manner executed over a period that extended from the late sixteenth to the mid eighteenth centuries. Italian Baroque architecture is not covered.
Lelio Falconieri (1585–1648) was an Italian Catholic Cardinal.
Orazio Falconieri was an Italian nobleman from Florence; he was the owner of the Villa Falconieri. His heraldic symbol was a falcon.
The Chiesa di Santa Rita da Cascia in Campitelli is a deconsecrated church in Rome (Italy), in the rione Sant'Angelo; it is located in Via Montanara, at the crossroad with Via del Teatro Marcello. The church formerly rose on the preexisting church of San Biagio de Mercato, dating at least to the 11th-century. The remains of St Blaise putatively were discovered during the dismantling of Santa Rita.
Lungotevere dei Fiorentini is the stretch of the Lungotevere that connects Piazza Pasquale Paoli to Via Acciaioli, in Rome, in the rione Ponte.
Palazzo Sacchetti is a palazzo in Rome, important for historical and artistic reasons.
Media related to Church of San Giovanni Battista dei Fiorentini at Wikimedia Commons
Preceded by San Giovanni a Porta Latina | Landmarks of Rome San Giovanni dei Fiorentini | Succeeded by Santi Giovanni e Paolo al Celio |