Sunday, April 17, 2011

Leftover Churches

I could with happiness spend another several weeks in Rome only seeing additional Baroque churches. For every one I did manage to see, there were half a dozen I had to miss. These last sets of photos are the churches I had not planned to see but that chance brought me to.

San Marcello






After the death of Bernini, Carlo Fontana became Papal architect and created the church of San Marcello on the Corse. Here, "delightful details include leafy palm fronds tied with ribbons on either side of the upper storey (instead of the more usual rigid scrolls) and the two playful but graceful angels which support the tondo over the doorway."



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Santa Maria della Consolazione al Foro Romano








Santa Maria della Consolazione  a non-famous neighborhood church encountered by accident in a kind of cul-de-sac behind the Forum. It reared up in front of me on a blustery morning like an opera backdrop with its heavy gray flat front.

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Santi Claudio e Andrea dei Bourgognoni




The Church of Saints Claudio and Andrea was small and shabby and dark on the inside, but still Baroque – a small-scale, low-budget version of the idiom. Built during the Thirty Years War by the Burgundian exiles in Rome.