New Visions of the Evangelists at the Hungarian Academy in Rome - til May 13

The 4 apostles, a subject that does not always hold fascination for us, open the current exhibit at the Hungarian Academy in Rome (the exhibit is scheduled to close May 13).  A glance at the poster seems to indicate a somewhat traditional portrait of one of the saints - in this case, Saint Matthew. We wandered into the exhibit nonetheless (being underwhelmed by the Wunderkammern group show across the street), informed by prior excellent shows at that Academy on via Giulia in Borromini's Palazzo Falconieri.

And our wandering was rewarded. The portrait of St. Matthew, by artist Erik Mátrai, on closer look was composed of money, acknowledging Matthew's role as a tax collector ("publican") - photo at right. The other 4 apostles similarly were composed of materials reflecting their status. Below is St. Mark, whose name is tied to the blessing of the crops, made out of seeds of grain.

Sts. Luke and John are at the end of the post.

The exhibit featured another spectacle of a work, very different from the 4 apostles, again by Mátrai, this one using light and reflection (from a lamp source and from a curtained window in the Palazzo), as well as from one's own shadow.

Here one can see more clearly the use of mirrors and shadows:

Works by 16 other artists play on the theme of the evangelists. Among those, we particularly liked Lajos Csontó's 12 disciples, wo are in essence real, ordinary, living people. His black and white photographs, accompanied by brief texts, have some of the feel of Bill Viola's videos and stills.

Below is Ilona Lovas's part installation/part painting/part sculpture on the washing of the feet:

Rome is home to great contemporary religious art. The "furnishings" at Piero Sartogo's Santo Volto church, about which we've written, are among them.  

And so too is this exhibit, "Vangelo 21" (21st Gospel), at the Hungarian Academy in Rome, via Giulia 1 (directly across from Wunderkammern Gallery), posted hours Monday through Friday 9:30-19:30.

Dianne

Here's St. Luke, reportedly a painter and a patron of the arts. Mátrai composed this painting - of the artist/saint painting an icon - of pieces of paintings he did not complete.

  Close-up of St. Luke

And below, St. John, a writer and patron saint of writers. Mátrai uses the letters A, B, and C, and overlaps them to create the texture of the painting.

St John, close-up

The First Mormon Temple in Italy - in Rome (sort of)

The temple looks large and impressive in this view, but it's actually quite small. The
curved planes seen here may be a citation to Meier's Jubilee Church, below,
or to Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. 

Our search for contemporary churches led us a few months ago to the first Mormon temple in Italy – dedicated on March 10 this year. It’s the 162^nd Mormon temple in the world.

It was indeed a search to find the temple, which is as far out of the center of Rome as any church we’ve found.  Touted as a building whose sponsors “spared no expense,” the temple is, frankly, underwhelming.  Of course, it must compete not only with the spectacular Catholic churches of the Renaissance, such as St. Peter’s and San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (both cited as inspirations for the temple) to name just two, but also 21^st-century churches we admire that include Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church and Piero Sartogo’s Santo Volto.

Scale model of interior of temple

For those who think Meier’s Jubilee Church is way out of town, you need to go twice as far to get to the Mormon Temple. It’s practically on top of the GRA (Rome’s outer ‘ring road’) and seems to fit in with, perhaps even be diminished by, the large, undistinguished shopping mall and apartment buildings nearby.

Meier's Jubilee Church

Piero Sartogo's Santo Volto

We found the temple decidedly uninspiring. The Salt Lake City-based Mormon architect might have done better to collaborate with an Italian starchitect to end up with something that approaches the awe-producing design of Paolo Portoghesi’s Mosque, or Meier's and Sartogo’s churches.

Mosque

Admittedly, we did not go inside the temple because once it is dedicated, non-Mormons are not permitted inside. Mormons are allowed inside only for specific purposes, which do not include basic church services.  The inside – from the scale model we were shown by a young American proselytizer at the Visitor Center, looks more homey than church-y.  Church services are held in a chapel, which again is decidedly – and it appears purposefully – plain.  There’s none of what Alain de Botton cites as the religious architecture that makes one almost believe there is a God.

Chapel

Adam and Eve

The Visitor Center paintings include an Adam and Eve who look like Barbie and Ken, the Mormons’ patron saint, Moroni, who looks like Charlton Heston, and others who may be designed to make us feel that we, too, can be figures in a Passion Play. It also has a faux Italian farmhouse and faux farm landscape.  A villetta was torn down to make way for the temple complex – so perhaps this is an homage to that villetta.  Regardless, it’s kitchy at best.

Moroni

Faux villetta inside Visitor Center

The Mormons have only recently been added to the list of religions that have an elevated status in Italy, allowing them some tax and other benefits. They cite the 1929 Concordat between Mussolini’s Fascist government and the Roman Catholic Church for inspiration, and they ended up hiring a lobbyist to get what they wanted, beginning that particular quest in 2006. The history of discrimination against the Mormons is an interesting one to be sure. Pope Francis met the LDS (see PS below) President in March, a first-ever meeting of those figures.

Faux campagna romana inside faux villetta

We’d like to think we’re eclectic in our lay appreciation of religious architecture, but, frankly, we’d skip this complex in favor of almost any other one in Rome. In fact, what attracted Bill on our scooter ride home was his discovery of a brutalist water tank that is in one of the books in our library on 200 great Rome architectural works of the 20^th century.  At least he got something out of our trek.

Dianne

Bill's brutalist water tower

PS We read recently that the Mormons no longer want to use that name and ask that everyone use the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or LDS for short.  Because they used Mormon when building and consecrating this temple, we stuck with it for this post.

Sartogo's Santo Volto Church - a Top Ten Visit

Put the 2006 church of Santo Volto di Gesù ("the Holy Face of Jesus") on your top 10 list for modern Rome architecture.  Less heralded than US architect Richard Meier's 2003 Dives in Miseracordia (known as the "Jubilee Church"), Santo Volto is equal to Meier's work and in some ways surpasses it. It's also closer to the center of Rome and easier to get to.

It's hard to overstate the dramatic impact of Santo Volto in this somewhat run-down neighborhood of Magliana.  Rome architect Piero Sartogo inserted the church into the fabric of the community on a small plot of land, totally unlike Meier's church, which has been heavily criticized for not being "of the neighborhood."  Perhaps for these reasons, too, the church is so heavily packed for Sunday mass that one must get there early to get a seat.  Sartogo's collaborator and wife, Nathalie Grenon, confirms the people in the community are proud of the church.

The 'half dome' looming among the nearby apartment buildings.

Sartogo used the concept of negative volume to present in reality a half-dome, an echo of the Pantheon, but modernized.  Quoting Grenon in a 2013 interview with us:
     The site of the church is critical. It's the idea of a city; it's urban. The language of the architecture here is the mass and the void. The void becomes a dynamic element, the void is inserted by creating a mass; and so there's that tension, as there is tension between the urban environment and the sacred.

But Grenon won't call the building "post modern."  In her words:

Entrance, with rectangular shapes contrasting with the round 'cupola.'
We would say shades of Fascism's rationalist period, but Grenon wouldn't buy it.
She would say only that the materials are Roman.

      The Santo Volto cupola is a reference to the Pantheon, and its idea of the sacred. In the Pantheon the sphere is inside, while in our church, the two halves of the dome are separate: one represents the sacred and the other the profane. All of Rome is constructed with shapes that come from somewhere else.

Let's just say the effect is awe-inspiring.  As social critic Alain de Botton says of some churches, they're designed to make you feel the power of God--and this one does, perhaps even for nonbelievers.

Mimmo Palladino's 4th Station of the Cross (Jesus meets his
afflicted mother).

Santo Volto is a showcase for contemporary Italian artists. Sartogo and Grenon commissioned several of them to provide the liturgical furnishings.  There was no budget for this purpose, and they had to work almost for free.  Some were famous; some were young and not.  Noted artist Mimmo Palladino's stations of the cross are impressive and of this century.  Young artist Pietro Ruffo's  "face of Jesus" painting is hauntingly gorgeous.

Pietro Ruffo's face of Jesus, above the confessionals.

And then there's the crucifix.  It was originally designed by noted Italian artist Jannis Kounnelis, but the Diocese rejected his design.  Sartogo and Grenon had to come up with something quickly, before the Pope's visit.  She sketched out the crucifix, which was supposed to be temporary but has become iconic.  It's now for sale at the Vatican.

Grenon holding a replica of the crucifix she
designed.

Grenon's interview contains more fascinating comments.  It's here in TheAmerican/inItaly online magazine.

The church is open as most churches are; with a break in the middle of the day.  To be safe, we suggest going before noon or from 4-7 pm.  Impressive as it is outside, you will want to see the inside too.  Via della Magliana 166.  The church is about 3/4 mile (1.3 km) from Piazza Meucci at the southern end of the Marconi district.

As some of our loyal readers know, we have made the modern churches of Rome a project.  For posts on churches, put 'modern church' in the search engine.

Additional photos below of, first, Meier's Jubilee Church and then several more of Santo Volto.

Dianne

Richard Meier's Jubilee Church.  The exception that proves the rule:  this day
we saw people enjoying the somewhat isolated church piazza.

Entrance doors to Santo Volto - echoing Renaissance church bronze doors.

Outside the half-cupola, in the open volume.

Play and contemplative space in back, nestled in the community.

From inside the church - through the back 'wall' and crucifix-
 one can see the neighborhood apartments.

Nathalie Grenon with the crucifix she designed--
now on sale at the Vatican.

Schematic of church and list of artists.

21st Century Churches Continued: Inviting or Not?

In January we began a series on Rome's contemporary churches, noting that much of contemporary Rome architecture is found in its churches, and most of those in the ex-urban areas. These churches tell us about the state of modern architecture and in many cases provide some social history. We continue our series with the remarkable church of San Franceso di Sales in the Rome suburb of Alessandrino (named for the aqueduct that still runs through the area).

Side view of the distinctive copper roof

One of us likes it better than the other, but there's no doubt this church, consecrated in 2005, is distinctive.  Its dramatic front, squared off repeatedly, then capped with a hood-like point, is designed to represent an inviting portal.  Whether it's inviting or not, we leave to you.

Speaking of inviting, our first trek (and it was a trek) out to this church resulted in the gates being shut on us.  You can see the large grey metal gates that are open in the top photo above.  But we arrived at noon, and the gates quickly closed.  Despite our pleas: no exceptions.

So, being RST, we retired to the bar across the road, where one has a front and center view of that dramatic portal.  And we had the chance to talk to the locals about their impressions of the church.  They seem to like it, but feel a bit disappointed that it wasn't by a famous architect and had few visitors such as us, in contrast to a Richard Meier tourist attraction, his gorgeous Jubilee Church less than a mile away in the area of Tor Tre Teste (you can do both in the same trip; see transportation suggestions at the end of this post).

As with several of the other "50 churches for Rome 2000" we have seen, this one too has an open plan, with little to separate the side chapels and other traditional church elements.  It also uses plenty of white travertine and paint, though it's not blindingly white like Meier's.

Besides the dramatic portal, the distinctive feature of this church is its copper roof, perhaps echoing Renzo di Piano's metal covered auditoriums at Parco della Musica.  Or, perhaps the shape of the roof inside and out and the interior wood suggest a ship--even Noah's ark--a frequent metaphor for the Church and one used by Richard Meier in his Jubilee Church.

View towards the back of the church

Blue-tinted windows and arching roof of laminated wood bring
streams of light into the church

The inside of the church is also distinctive, with an octagonal shape, a wood-beamed roof, and 100 or so blue-tinted windows that produce a bounty of streams of light.

Modern, white interior fixtures; no indication
of an artist separate from the architects

The fixtures are all highly modern, in white travertine as well.

Stations of the Cross are outside

Walkway for the Stations of the Cross

The church is unusual in having the Stations of the Cross outside, along the side and behind the church.

The architects are Lucrezio Carbonaro, Paulo Dattero and Alfredo Re of Studio Dattero and Re.  We could find no other buildings of theirs cited anywhere.

The parish was founded in 1961.  One can imagine the suburban area just beginning to sprout up then. But the parish, and its priest, struggled for more than 40 years to construct a church here, encountering many hurdles.  As we noted above, it wasn't until 2005 that the church was consecrated. Apparently the church hierarchy took pity on the priest and included the new church in its 2000 plan even though, as the hierarchy said, the church did not meet the economic considerations to be one of the "50 churches for Rome 2000"--maybe because it's so close to the Jubilee Church. The priest died days before the church dedicated to San Francesco di Sales was consecrated, knowing it had been built.

Parishioners generally seem pleased with their modern church

Unlike some of the 21st century churches, this one seems to have
had few "homey" touches added

Below are more photos of the church, and some of its surroundings.

 If you want to see it, remember it is closed from noon to 4:30 p.m., and likely after 6 p.m.  Address:  viale Alessandrino, no. 585.  It's between via Prenestina and via Casilina, inside the GRA.  If you can handle some walking, you can take the #14 tram from Stazione Termini to its end, on viale Palmiro Togliatti, and walk a half mile or less to the church.  Then, less than 1 mile away from the church is Meier's Jubilee Church, and you can walk back to the #14 tram line.  You can also be dropped on viale P. Togliatti 2 short blocks from San Francesco di Sales by taking the Red Metro line (Anagnina direction) to the Cinecitta' stop and taking a # 451 bus (every 7 minutes during normal hours, on the southwest corner of via Tuscolona and viale Palmiro Togliatti; bus is labeled "Ponte Mammolo") from there 10 stops; apparently the same route doesn't work well going the other way.  The bus service (ATAC) recommends you take the #14 to get back to the centro. (For all bus directions, we recommend the www.atac.roma.it Web site.)

Look for more modern church posts in the future!

Dianne

Sunday mass; the ubiquitous white, perhaps Roman, columns

The church's suburban neighborhood seen from the church's high ground




Confessional

Detail on bell tower

Baptismal

Woman begging outside church was the recipient of alms
from the local parishioners, who seemed to know her well

Campanile