Ecclesiastical Rome Seems To Have Inherited The Instinct Of
Imperial Rome For Ugliness; Only, Where Imperial Rome Used The Instinct
Collectively, Ecclesiastical Rome Has Used It Distributively In The
Innumerable Churches, Each Less Lovely Than The Other.
This position
will do to hedge from; it is a bold outpost from which I may be driven
in, especially by travellers who have seen the churches I did not see.
I
took my chances, they theirs; for nobody can singly see all the churches
in Rome; that would need a syndicate.
If imperial Rome was beautiful in detail because it had the Greeks to
imagine the things it so hideously grouped, ecclesiastical Rome may be
unbeautiful in detail because it had not the Goths to realize the beauty
of its religious aspiration - that is, if it was the Goths who invented
Gothic architecture; I do not suppose it was. Anyway, there is said to
be but one Gothic church in Rome, and this I did not visit, perhaps
because I felt that I must inure myself to the prevalent baroque, or
perhaps from mere perversity. I can merely say in self-defence that, on
the outside, Santa Maria sopra Minerva no more promised an inner beauty
than Il Gesu, which is the most baroque church in Rome, without the
power of coming together for a unity of effect which baroque churches
sometimes have. It is a tumult of virtuosity in painting, in scuplture,
in architecture. Statues sprawl into frescoed figures at points in the
roof, and frescoed figures emerge in marble at others.
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