Daily Rome Shot 230

3 Comments

1. rhurd says:

   28 July 2021 at 7:39 PM

   This is the unforgettable funeral monument by and for Giovanni Battista Gisleni, an Italian Baroque architect and stage designer who died in 1672. It is just one of the hundreds of remarkable features in the Augustinian Church of Santa Maria del Popolo at the north end of the Piazza del Popolo. According to Wikipedia, the memorial was designed and installed by the architect himself in 1670, two years before his death.

   You’ll find the monument along a pillar on the counter façade of the church. The lower part with the skeletal figure is a symbol, not so much of death but of future resurrection.
   One of the more intriguing inscriptions on the monument is Neque hic vivus and Neque illic mortuus (“Neither living here, nor dead there.”)

   The church itself is the probably the church where Martin Luther stayed on his visit to Rome around 1511.

   The front part of the church features the icon of the Madonna del Popolo while one of the side chapels holds Caravaggio’s the Conversion of Saint Paul and the Crucifixion of Saint Peter, but don’t forget to pay your respects also to Mr. Gisleni who is still there patiently awaiting the resurrection.
2. lgreen515 says:

   29 July 2021 at 10:14 AM

   rhurd–Is this his skeleton? It’s an amazing monument.
3. Suburbanbanshee says:

   1 August 2021 at 9:38 AM

   This is one of those things which walks that line between tasteless and amazingly devout… but it feels wholesome and gentle, all the same. People say that artists and architects put themselves into their work, but this guy really did decide that he could entrust his body to his work, until the Resurrection.

   I wonder if people sit there and talk to him. He seems like his tomb would be a good friend to the troubled.

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