Mich hat der Gedanke nicht losgelassen, dass Bernini offensichtlich den Papst davon überzeugen konnte, diese Bühne ohne jegliche Untermauerung durch Dekorationen, wichtige Inschriften, Reliefs, Figuren usw. im Zeitalter des beginnenden Barock so rein zu bauen. Lediglich der bereits an diesem Standort aufgestellte Obelisk und ein Brunnen waren zu integrieren. Eine grandiose Reduktion auf die Kollonaden und die Ausrichtung mit der Geländebewegung kreieren diesem überragenden räumlichen und wahrnehmingspsychologischen Effekt!

Roman Nitpicking - St Peter's Square
 
Our first days in Rome, before we get caught up in the heart and heat of the City, have been those of the considered observers, not rushing to see the monuments but mulling the character and content, the form, the light and the relationship between theatre and perspective. 
 
After a couple of days in the tourist-free streets to the north of the Vatican, reading of, absorbing, and remarking on the emergence of the Roman way of life, we go first to St Peters Square, which it isn’t.  It isn’t even an oval or an ellipse, as it is variously described, it is instead defined by two arcs of circles and a tangential curve of paving in between. We seek the etymology of ‘square’ and find it comes from the Roman ‘quadra’, suggesting four, and it isn’t that either.

We had read of the three pillars of power that underpinned the Rise of the Rome Empire, one of which recognised the equality of the proletariat in the guidance of the state. The gradual whittling away of this socialist principal led to the Fall, and St Peter’s Square reflects the consequences.

St Peter’s Arced Quadra, as we now choose to call it, is a space to contain and create awe in the minds of an audience, to accentuate the importance of the actor above the masses through the application of scale, gradient and perspective.  In contrast to the overt decoration of the façade of the Basilica, Bernini chooses to reinforce the stage and the script by containing lesser mortals in colonnaded simplicity, surrounded and watched over by saints who must be revered. The Vatican describes the colonnades as ‘arms’, but whether to embrace or control seems undecided.   Either way, this is not a place to share in ownership, but one in which your position and belief is reinforced by those who possess the wealth and a direct line to God.

Puzzlingly, Bernini’s colonnaded simplicity is not that pure. Despite the difficulties of constructing two vast radiused collonades and a couple of inclined galleries on a landscape that rises and falls like an Empire, with the skills available to Bernini we would have thought it all could have been built with the obelisk in the middle. But no, it appears the setting of this pivotal needle is out by a meter or so, certainly from east to west and possibly from north to south. We may seem to be carping but, given that Rome wasn’t built in a day we consider it may have been possible to achieve a little more accuracy.

And then, in complete contrast to the single-God principle that underpins Bernini’s space and his client, the importance given to a polytheistic Egyptian obelisk strikes us as peculiar, and particularly when it is then repurposed as a zodiac gnomon, a device that speaks of an exactness born of the firmament, more immutably geometric than the colonnades, but representing a pagan alternative to the definition of individual character otherwise determined by adherence to the lessons of the Catholic Church. All very confusing.

Of course, we later dig into Google and find all sorts of learned treatise on the mathematical and astronomical geometry of this space, some of which are more or less believable, but that was less enjoyable on the day than trying to work it out for ourselves.
 
So we repaired to a local café and decided by the application of double-espresso laced with pseudo-science, that within St Peter’s Square character is informed by a combination of pagan nature and religious nurture, perspective doesn’t have to be true to satisfy the desires of your mind, and a belief in equality is equally malleable if those in power put on a good enough show. 

September 2022