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Hello, and welcome to Stuff About Things, an Art History Podcast. My name is Lindsay. I'm a PhD student in art history, and I do the stuff and things for the stuff and things of this podcast. This, my friends, is what you'd call a van women show. Before I start today's episode, I want to alert y'all to another art history podcast that came on my radar recently. In January, I was contacted by Bernadine Franco of the Beyond the Paint podcast. Bernadine is an educator and an art historian who has a ridiculous amount of episodes up, each of which is about 15 to 30 minutes long, and focuses on women artists and makers, many of whom I have never heard of. And as you know, I love being introduced to new things and hearing stuff about them. Tabut Bernadine was so kind in her emails, she didn't even correct me when I called her a practicing artist. I don't know why I did that. I've got dissertation brain, but she's been very supportive of this podcast, and she has a voice like Budda. Her voice makes mine sound like razor blades. We are very hopeful that we can do a collaboration sometime in the future when I manage to get my ducks in a row. But my ducks happen to be very wonky at the moment. So it might be a few more months until that happens. I'm so sorry. In the meantime, please go and listen to Beyond the Paint with Bernadine Franco. And thank you so much to Bernadine for being so kind and generous in featuring this podcast on her podcast. Speaking of my wonky ducks, if you will, today's episode is very special for me. It's special because it is the first one I'm recording from Rome, where I have been since early January and will be located for about the next five months. I try not to toot my own horn too much on the podcast. People don't like that, but I'll make an exception for this because it's a big deal. I'm very proud of it, and there are people who are paying for me to be here who deserve to have their own horn tooted. So I will just write along. I'm in Rome as a fellow, which is essentially like a scholarship, at the American Academy in Rome. Each year, the American Academy in Rome selects about 30 scholars and artists from all different fields to come and live on their campus to work on their own individual projects. It's an honor known as the Rome Prize, very fancy. And I happen to be the Rome Prize Fellow in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. My fellowship is very generously funded by the Samuel H. Crest Foundation and Donald and Maria Cox. I'm very proud to be here, and I'm also very relieved to be here because we weren't sure if it would happen because of COVID. We are making it work. We do get COVID tested every Monday, and thankfully this week our COVID nurse was a different person because last week the guy went so far up my schnazz that he hurt my feelings along with my brain. As the result of me being here, I suspect, I don't know, because let's be real, I'm usually flying by the seat of my pants with this podcast. I suspect that the episodes going forward will be Rome and Italy-centric. Not only am I here, living it up in a mask, and wanting to know more about the things around me, but I'm also surrounded by some of the coolest people and smartest people who know so much stuff about so many things. I've gotten to hear about Roman triumphal routes, about Rome's talking statues, and most recently, about Rome's obelisk obsession. I am sure that some of that will eventually make its way into podcast land. And I'm very excited. But for today, I want to tell you about one of my favorite places in the city. This is the part where I tell you stuff about a thing and the people who gave it wings. The Ponte St. Angelo and John Lorenzo Bernini. Let's be real for a minute. Um, and I'll tell you why I love the Ponte St. Angelo so much. Mind you, I am getting my PhD in art history, like I'm a legit person doing stuff, but this'll this will maybe put a hit to my credibility. But I don't care, it's the truth. So the reason that I love the Ponte St. Angelo so much is because whenever I stand on it, I feel like I'm in the middle of a Dan Brown book. In fact, the Castel St. Angelo, which is the castle very closely associated with the bridge, we'll talk about it, that and the Ponte St. Angelo have a pretty prominent role in Dan Brown's book Angels and Demons, best known for being the prequel to the more famous and more controversial Da Vinci Code. I love places that make me feel like I could be at the center of one of those mysteries. The Ponte St. Angelo for me is one of those places. It's dramatic and beautiful and even a little spooky. I wanted to know more about the bridge and its history. And not only, you know, just in case I ever get sucked in and involved in an art history mystery that requires me to have knowledge of this particular structure, which not so secretly is a dream of mine, but also because the Ponte St. Angelo, for me, is a place where ancient Renaissance and Baroque and modern Rome all intersect in a really special way. In this episode, I will spend some time on the bridge's ancient and medieval past, but for the most part, I will focus on what the bridge looks like today, with the angels designed and sculpted by John Lorenzo Bernini and his assistants. And for all you Bernini heads out there, don't worry, there will be a substantial portion on the artist himself. With that being said, please climb aboard this crazy train. First stop, ancient Rome. The name Ponte Sant'Angelo is the result of the bridge's function. In Italian, the word bridge is Ponte, P-O-N-T-E, whereas Sant'Angelo refers to the monument directly in front of the bridge, which is the Castel St. Angelo, a very distinctive round fortress on the bank of the Tiber, the river that splits Rome into two. The Ponte Sant'Angelo, however, has not always been known as the Ponte St'Angelo. The bridge was first built around 134 CE, so about 1900 years ago. It was built by the Emperor Hadrian, whose full fancy name was Publius Aelius Hadrianus. The bridge was therefore first known as the Pons Aelias or the Alien Bridge. As the emperor of all of the Roman Empire, Hadrian had to have the biggest tomb. It was a very important monument for them, one that wouldn't just be a final resting place, but also a piece of their legacy and a testament to their work as emperor. Hadrian decided to build his tomb on the right bank of the Tiber River, which again is the river that splits Rome. Now, most traces of that original structure are no longer visible, particularly from the outside. The exterior of the structure is a much later addition that was put on in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance. However, if you go inside the Castel Sant'Angelo, which I highly recommend, there are fantastic views from the top, and it's also just, you know, like interesting, you can still see what remains of the original structure built in the time of Hadrian. There are also mock-ups of what people thought this thing once looked like, and it is cuckoo. It is cuckoo, cocoa puffs, crazy crazy banana time. It's crazy. The most common mock-up that you see is something like a multi-tiered wedding cake with a square base, a circular structure on top of that base with a bunch of columns, and then a forest garden thing on top of that. It always fascinates me how they grew stuff on top of things. Like it's crazy. In the middle of that forest garden that topped the mausoleum, there was then another structure that looked kind of ish like a Roman temple. And on top of that, there was a bronze sculpture of a chariot pulled by four horses. Apart from the bronze sculpture, the entire monument was decked out in white marble. So imagine a huge, like massive, multi-tiered white marble structure that had trees on top of it. That was Hadrian's tomb. Today the Castel Sant Angelo retains something of the shape of the tomb, but very, very little by way of what it actually looked like when it was first built. As I keep saying, I think it's the third time I'm saying this, Rome is split into two by a river, the Tiber River. Now, when discussing the Tiber River and its banks, the right bank and the left bank are the opposite of what you'd assume from looking at a map. That's because the Tiber River runs north to south. So the right bank is on the west and the left bank is on the east. Much of the historic center of Rome is on the left bank of the Tiber. Now I realize that all of Rome is technically historic and whatever, but with regards to the Roman stuff, the Forum, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, etc., etc., it is all on the left bank of the Tiber. In building his mausoleum on the right bank of the Tiber, Hadrian obviously had to also build a bridge. This bridge would allow people to more easily visit the structure, so that they could go and pay homage to him and you know do all the Emperor Morning stuff. I don't I don't know. Now it's not like they would have had to swim across if this bridge didn't exist or anything, because there were other bridges at other points on the Tiber River, but this one provided direct access from the left bank to Hadrian's mausoleum on the right. In fact, the bridge was planned from the start of the mausoleum project, and it was completed several years before the mausoleum was. Mind you, the mausoleum was huge, and like obviously that takes more time, but the bridge was an important part of this whole process. When Hadrian died, he was cremated, and his ashes were interred at the mausoleum. Over the course of decades to come, however, his mausoleum became the place to be buried. Over the years, several family members, as well as future emperors, chose to have their ashes deposited there, thus making his mausoleum their mausoleum. Apparently, uh the mausoleum was impressive enough for all of their ashes and dead egos to coexist. The thing is, empires don't last forever. The Roman Empire lasted a few more centuries after Hadrian died. The exact date of its downfall is very much debated, but by the 5th century common era, so like around the year 400, give or take a few decades, the Roman Empire really began to fall from power. It was around this time that the Goths, as in an ancient Germanic people, and not, you know, like black lipstick-wearing youths who listened to German death reggae, can you imagine? It was around that time that the Goths started to threaten the city of Rome, and in response, the Romans fortified Hadrian's tomb to use as a line of defense. At one point, the Goths got so close that the Romans pulled down statues in the mausoleum, broke them into pieces, and then started chucking those pieces over the edge of the fortress at these invading Goths, which I realize was probably very scary at the time, but now in retrospect, sounds like a scene out of a Monty Python movie. In 590, the Mausoleum of Hadrian gets a name change, or at least that's when the name change business starts. It was around 589-590 that a horrible plague ravaged the city. The 6th century, so the 500s, was a time of plagues, which, like, hey, what's up? But that was when the plague of Justinian was ravaging Europe and the Near East. To give you an idea of just how bad that plague was, something like 25 million people died, and the plague would have bouts of reoccurrence every few years. During about that plague, if you will, in 590, Pope Gregory I, also known as Pope Gregory the Great, had a vision in which Saint Michael the Archangel landed atop Hadrian's mausoleum. In the vision, the angel drew out his great sword, and in doing so signaled the end of the plague. And hey, Michael, Mr. Archangel, can you please come do that again? Like, are you napping, sir? What is going on? Come save us, please. Thank you. Around that time, a marble sculpture of the Archangel was placed atop the structure to commemorate this miraculous event, thus making it the Castle of the Angel, the Castel Sant Angelo. In turn, the bridge, which has always been connected to that structure, becomes known as the Ponte Sant Angelo. The vision of Pope Gregory would come up again nearly a thousand years later in 1348. It was in that year that there was another terrible plague, like truly awful, the one that we commonly associate with the term the Black Death. At this point in history, when something really bad was happening, Christians, and I'm sure other religions, but right now we're focusing on Christians, Christians just assumed that God was super duper pissed at them. In Rome, the Pope at the time, Clement the what's that Roman numeral? Clement the Sixth. We're gonna be talking about lots of lots of popes in this episode. So in Rome in 1348, the Pope at the time, Clement VI, wanted to make amends with God. Hey, you've been ignoring us for too long, we need your help. I don't know what we did to make you mad, but we're like really sorry. You're upset. I understand that you're upset, you're ignoring us, but like bodies are piling up in the streets, and you gotta come help us. Clement VI decided to make a grand gesture, and he hopped on his 14th-century Pope Mobile, probably like a horse or something carried by peasants, and he moved from the church of Santa Maria in Aricelli, which is located at the Campidoglio near the Colosseum, and he processed all the way to St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. At the very front of this procession was some guy carrying a banner of an image of the Virgin Mary. And wouldn't you know it? Wouldn't you know it? But as the Pope's procession neared the home stretch into the Vatican and it turned to cross the Ponte Sant'Angelo, Clement and his posse looked up, and dozens of people, including the Pope, swear that they saw the marble statue of Michael on top of Hadrian's mausoleum bow to the banner of Mary. I'm not sure if the plague actually ended after that, that's the subtext, but it certainly was perceived as a miracle. The world could have used a few more angels and um a couple more miracles on December 19th of 1450. 1450 was a Jubilee year. Jubilee years are like the coachella of Catholicism. Typically, every 25 to 50 years, the Catholic Church has this big celebration. All these pilgrims flock to Rome, everyone is like partying and praying, and everyone's looking out for miracles, and there's indulgences of sin. So, like, if you come to Rome during that year, you get fewer years in purgatory, relics tend to go on display, like it's a big deal. And a lot of people flock to Rome during those years. Specifically, you want to be at the Vatican, and of course, the Ponte Sant'Angelo functions as the main thoroughfare to get from one side to the other. During the 1450 Jubilee year, the Pope at the time, Pope Nicholas V, announced on December 19th of 1950, uh not 1950, no, 1450, that he was going to put the veil of Saint Veronica on display. Now I think that I talk about the Veil of St. Veronica very briefly in the Shroud of Turin episode, but the veil is a very important relic for Catholics. It's a piece of fabric said to have the imprint of Christ's face on it, and the Pope was going to put that on display. So all of these pilgrims who were in the city flocked to the Vatican over this single bridge, which at this point also had shops lining its sides, and so the passageway was pretty narrow. When they get to the Vatican, it's like four o'clock in the afternoon, and the Pope decides: you know what, it's too late in the day, so I'm not going to put out the Vale of St. Veronica, which leads to this mass exodus of grumpy pilgrims back to the city, and therefore back over the Ponte Sant'Angelo. And somewhere on that bridge, a mule, a donkey, decided to protest, maybe have a nap, I don't know. But the donkey refuses to move on this narrow bridge, and people can't get around it. So the bridge is packed with people. Again, it sounds like a Monty Python moment, but it quickly turned into a horror story when some of the bridge's supports collapsed, sending dozens and dozens of people into the rushing Tiber River and panicking everyone else. By the end of the day, over 170 people had died as the result of drowning or being trampled. It was an absolute tragedy. The events of 1450 also left this ever-important bridge severely damaged, and it had to be almost completely rebuilt. There are late 15th-century maps of Rome that give us an idea of what the bridge looked like then, uh, and not to sound totally incompetent, but to me, in these maps, the bridge looks like a bridge. It's a bridge with small towers on either end. A couple of other popes made some changes over the decades and the centuries, and at one point there were even two chapels located on the bridge. But their construction resulted in one of the bridge's arches being blocked, leaving only three passages that the Tiber River could flow through. And as time went on, that wasn't enough. So the bridge essentially turned into a dam. The thing is, it's a bridge, it's not supposed to be a dam. And it caused hella flooding. So in the 16th century, those two chapels that I mentioned were pulled down in order to alleviate that issue and introduce a fourth, you know, passageway, a fourth arc into the bridge. In order to acknowledge those now destroyed chapels, however, two statues were erected on the bridge that to me have always seemed out of place. And it was only in researching this episode that I figured out. Out why they're there. The two statues are of Saints Peter and Paul, which now flank the entrance of the bridge if you are coming from the historical center, if you're on the left bank. The statue of St. Peter was specifically commissioned for this purpose, and it was carved by a man named Lorenzetto, who was a contemporary and friend of Raphael. The sculpture of St. Paul, on the other hand, was an earlier work by Paolo Romano. They just took it from wherever it was and they put it on this bridge. And there's inscriptions on the bases of these sculptures that say that they are put there in commemoration of these chapels. Because it's kind of a big deal when you tear a chapel down. The Ponte St. Angelo got spiffed up again with even more statues when Emperor Charles V entered Rome in 1536. Now, whenever the Emperor comes to town, cities really put in the work to show off. They'd sometimes prepare for years. That being said, the decorations that were put up were very often ephemeral. They weren't intended to last very long. An example of this are the statues that were produced to decorate the Ponte Sant'Angelo, which were made of stucco or sort of like a plaster-like material, which of course naturally degrades, especially in the rain, though they did last for a few years. Now I love Wikipedia as much as the next person I do, but in this instance, uh, this is one in which Wikipedia is not entirely right, because it states that these stucco statues were angels made by the sculptor Raffaello di Montelupo. It is true that Raffaello di Montelupo, and another guy, Lorenzetto, the author of the St. Peter sculpture, did complete a series of stucco statues to adorn this bridge, but they weren't of angels. The eight statues were instead of Saints Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, the names given to the writers of the four Gospels, and another group of four individuals, this time the patriarchs of the Christian faith, Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. Those sculptures were sometimes joined by other figures, these ones of a slightly less desirable nature. For several hundred years, the Ponte Sant'Angelo served as the display area for the corpses of criminals who were hanged in the nearby square. The city would just put the bodies on display, I would assume by hanging them from the bridge, but I didn't look into it that much. And so they would serve as a warning to those who passed by, to not do what those criminals did, lest you end up as, you know, like a corpse on the Ponte Sant'Angelo. I think about that sometimes now when I walk over the bridge, and it always puts a bit of a chill down my spine. Not only knowing that 170 plus people died in 1450, but also that it was a regular thing in the 16th century to see the bodies of hanged men there. For me, it's those kinds of stories that make me more aware than ever that history isn't an abstract concept. It's centuries of lives lived and of lives lost, and that the objects and buildings and bridges that they have left behind are merely ours to borrow while we're here. You know, it's not exactly a happy thought, but I think that's a big part of what draws us to these things and these places. Or maybe that's just me. The bridge went through another structural makeover in the 1620s and the 1630s, but I'm not going to talk about that because it's boring. And for those of us who aren't architects or nerds. Okay, I'm guilty. I'm guilty of the last one. It's a bridge, and the discussion of towers and ramps and hydraulics and whatever the heck else oddly doesn't make for great podcasting. That brings us to 1667. Look at that. 1500 years of history in 25 minutes. Wow. In 1667, something big happened involving a man named Giulio Rospigliosi. Despite his name, Giulio Rospigliosi was neither an international spy nor a bond villain, though I'm sure he contained the possibility for such multitudes. In 1667, Rospigliosi traded in his dope AF name for a new one, Clement IX. That's right, our non-bond villain friend became the Pope. The Pope is by far the most important person, at least living person, in the Catholic Church. He's the godfather of the Catholic Church. He's like the guy in charge. And while I'm sure it continues to this day, I don't really know that much about modern-day popes, much to my mother's chagrin. But popes of centuries past have worked really hard and spent lots of money on art, building projects, and everything in between. Much like the emperors of millennia past, each new pope felt like it was their personal duty, their poisonal duty, to outdo the projects of the last pope, and then the pope before that, and then the other guy. And when Clement IX took over, he decided that one of his first projects as Pope was going to be the beautification, my word, not his, of the Ponte Sant'Angelo. He's the Pope, the most important guy in the entire city, and he only works with the best of the best. So Pope Clement IX gets on the blower to call up the most accomplished sculptor of the day to undertake this new project, a man by the name of John Lorenzo Bernini. Both then and now, Bernini was and remains a name brand artist. His greatest hits album would include The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, where Homegirl looks like she's floating on a cloud but the whole thing is of marble. It would include the Baldican, the large bronze canopy thing in St. Peter's Basilica. It would include a number of sculptures in the Borghese gallery, such as the Abduction of Proserpina, and there are also his many fountains, such as the Four Rivers Fountain in Piazza Novona. Gloriously, all of these things are now in my backyard. I'm a very lucky girl. Bernini was born in Naples in 1598. His father, Pietro, was from Tuscany, but had established a career in Naples before moving his family, including the young Gian Lorenzo, to Rome in about 1606. That is where Pietro began to train his son to carve marble. In addition to his training with his dad, Rome was the young Bernini's playground, and he grew up amidst masterpieces, from the classical statuary of the Romans to the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. It was clear very early on that Bernini was something of a prodigy. He allegedly, allegedly, I've got questions, uh, because it makes me like it like is a little bit upsetting that he was this talented, this young, but he allegedly carved a marble sculpture of Saint Lawrence when he was just 15. The sculpture shows the saint being martyred or killed. And for St. Lawrence, that method of martyrdom was being, get this, grilled to death on an iron grate over open flame. That's why people make the the bad joke that St. Lawrence is the patron saint of hamburgers. It's like, what dad made that one up? The sculpture, though, is incredible. It's down the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and it certainly goes to show for how precocious, how talented this kid was at a very young age. Important people took notice of this, such as, you know, the Pope, Paul V, who became one of Bernini's early patrons, marking the start of Bernini's very long career in the employ of the popes and the papal court in Rome. Another one of Bernini's most eager patrons was the cardinal Scipione Borghese, who was also a patron of the then recently deceased Caravaggio. One of his more famous works for the cardinal was the abduction of Proserpina by the god Pluto, perhaps better known by their Greek names of Persephone and Hades. If you ever see a detail of a marble sculpture by Bernini in which fingers are pressing into flesh, that's usually from this work, which shows Hades grabbing Proserpina as he abducts her in order to make her Queen of the Underworld. Now, if it weren't for the very significant plot line of abduction and assault, um, you know, Queen of the Underworld, not a bad gig. She was then tricked into staying with him after she ate four measly pomegranate seeds. I don't eat pomegranate to this day, just in case. Also, timeout. Proserpina is a great name. Let's bring that one back along with Sofanisba. No, I will never ever have children, but if I do, I will name her Sofanisba Proserpina. And she would know no end to her power. Over the years, Bernini continues to establish himself as the most talented sculptor of his time. He also did some other stuff. He did some writing, and he was also a very accomplished architect. Things really picked up for Bernini when Maffeo Barberini was elected as Pope, taking the name of Urban VIII. When you are in Rome, if you start paying attention, you will start to see the emblem of bees, as in that kind of bee, you will see them all over the place. That was the symbol of the Barberini family, and of this pope, Urban VIII in particular. Urban VIII wanted for himself what Michelangelo had been to previous popes. He wanted his go-to genius who could oversee any number of projects and help him leave behind a real, lasting legacy. It was under Urban VIII that Bernini undertook some of his greatest projects, like St. Peter's Baldekin. He took on greater roles in architectural projects, and he also produced the absolutely ginormous sculpture of St. Longinus in St. Peter's, which is over 12 feet tall. It's huge. This was by far the best 20 years of Bernini's career, but it wasn't without its low points. One of those low points, the low point, came in 1641, when Bernini took over the building project for the facade of St. Peter's Basilica, which had been in the works for decades. And when he took over, uh, things went terribly wrong. There is a natural spring that goes under St. Peter's that makes the ground very difficult to build on. And the tower that Bernini was building, I don't really know what happened and how these problems cropped up, but the tower began to crack almost immediately. In retrospect, this was something of a metaphor, because Bernini's career was also on thin ice. But as long as Urban VIII was alive, Bernini was protected, even exalted. But the thing about popes, much like empires, is that they don't live forever. When Pope Urban VIII died in 1644, a new Pope took over, Innocent X. And let me tell you, Innocent X absolutely effing-hated Urban VIII, who had basically bankrupted the papacy by bankrolling all of these crazy art projects, many of which were carried out by Bernini. For this and, of course, other reasons, Innocent X wanted nothing to do with Bernini. In fact, it was Innocent X who tore down that faulty tower that Bernini had made for St. Peter's, which was nothing short of humiliating for the sculptor. Nevertheless, Bernini did worm his way back into some commissions for the Pope, including the massive fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Novona, which Bernini essentially tricked Innocent X into hiring him for. And boy, I gotta know your tips, because I gotta trick someone into employing me very soon. Over the course of the 1640s and the 1650s, Bernini created some of his other most celebrated works, first and foremost of which is the ecstasy of St. Teresa in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. The other masterpiece of Bernini's career is the architectural design of St. Peter's Square, which he undertook in the early 1660s under the new Pope Alexander VII, who, in reacting against Innocent X, who hated Bernini, freaking loved Bernini. Other triumphs included the ovular church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale and the Scalaregg, a massive staircase in the Vatican. Those successes were followed by an absolutely disastrous visit to France, where Brunini was forced to go to work for King Louis XIV. And in France, almost everything Brunini wanted to do was rejected because it was considered too Italian. Which, bonjour, the man's Italian. Like, why would you bring him here if you didn't want something Italian? What are we what are we doing here? But long story short, by 1667, Bernini was back in Italy, and won't you know it, there was a new Pope. Our boy Rospliosi, Pope Clement IX, who decides he wants to zhuz up the Ponte Sant'Angelo, to which we now return. Pope Clement IX gets Bernini on the blowa, and he's like, hey dude, that's how popes all start their phone calls. Hey dude, I got this job for you, and uh just reminding you that you can't say no because I'm the Pope. And of course, because he's the Pope, Bernini says yes and agrees to undertake this new job. It certainly helped that Bernini and Clement IX were birds of a feather. They got along well and they were even friends as far as a pope and his talented minion can be friends. They even had dinners together sometimes, like this was a romance. In 1667, when the project began, the Ponte St. Angelo was still the only bridge that provided direct access to the Vatican from the center of Rome. Clement IX wanted to celebrate that. The plan was for Bernini and his assistants to produce 10 statues of angels. Keep in mind that around this time Bernini turned 70, which was pretty old for the 17th century. No offense to anyone out there, but if you got above like 60, you were doing pretty good. Also, Bernini is an extremely well-established artist at this point, which is to say that his role in the Ponte Sant'Angelo was to design and oversee the project. He did have a hand in sculpting at least two of the angels, but for the most part, his assistants undertook the physical labor of the project. Bernini's design for these ten angels was to create life-size figures that would flank the edges of the bridge, and each one of those angels would be holding a different instrument or object associated with Christ's torture and crucifixion. This includes the crown of thorns, nails, the cross, and other such objects. The angels were to be made of Carrara marble. As the name suggests, this marble is found in quarries at Carrara, a city about 250 miles away from Rome that produced the best quality marble that Italy could offer. For reference, Carrara marble was Michelangelo's marble of choice. If it's good enough for Michelangelo, is it good enough for Bernini? As the overseer of this project, Bernini put in an order for 10 blocks of Carrara marble. Now, back in that day, there was no 17th century equivalent to Amazon Prime. In addition to the hard and time-consuming work of mining the marble from the quarry, it was extremely difficult to transport. The blocks that Bernini ordered would have weighed an obscene amount, given that a cubic foot of marble alone weighs somewhere around 170 pounds. That's what I weigh. And they barely let me on the plane to get here. Which, you know, it was probably something to do with my visa, but I'm still suspicious of their motives. Once these massive blocks were quarried, weighing thousands of pounds, they had to be transported from the quarry to a ship. The ship in the water then did the quote-unquote easy work of transporting said blocks 200 plus miles down the coast. When the marble arrived at the port nearest to Rome, it then had to be loaded onto carts pulled by oxen or buffalo. Now this made me realize I've never actually seen a buffalo in Italy, but they must exist because they make really good mozzarella. Delicious. The entire process took months. So you'd think that when the blocks came in, Bernini would be elated. They can start their work. No. It turns out that two of the blocks did not meet his standards and demanded they send him two more blocks, which they did. And fun fact, it wasn't until after Bernini died that the guy who quarried the blocks, or was like in charge of procuring these blocks at least, it wasn't until after Bernini died that this guy insisted on being paid for these rejected blocks, some 10 years after the fact. That brings me to, I won't say it's my favorite Bernini story because it's very violent, but it's the story I find most illuminating because for all of his genius, Bernini was what we might call a tough personality. He had some major issues. Case in point, in his 30s, Bernini started sleeping with the wife of one of his assistants. This woman's name was Costanza. Bernini shacking up with her, but then he finds out that Costanza started sleeping with another person. And Bernini freaked out. Bernini started sleeping with the wife of one of his assistants, and he expects her to be faithful. Homie, she's already cheating on her husband with you. This does not bode well. It does not bode, sir. It turns out though, that Costanza's second side piece was Bernini's brother. Which, uh, like I think she could have made some better life choices there. But one of the first life choices she should have made was to not get involved with Bernini in the first place. Naturally, Bernini found out that she was sleeping with his brother, as you know, as you do, and this is where Home Fry went off the deep end. As revenge, Bernini ordered his servant to go to Costanza's house and slash her face with a razor. No, honey, no, we don't we don't do that. Look at your life, look at your choices. This is all to say that I don't blame that marble guy for waiting until Bernini died to be like, hey, your boy had issues with the blocks I sent, and this isn't Amazon Prime, no free returns, give me my money. I feel like that's the proper approach for someone who didn't want razor blades for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack. Thank you very much. Eventually, however, ten acceptable blocks arrive and are distributed amongst Bernini and his assistants. For his part, Bernini had an active role in carving two of the ten angels the angel with the crown of thorns and the angel carrying the superscription. I N R I, which is the thing that you often see attached to a crucifix that has, you know, the letters I-N-R-I, which stands for Jesus Nazarenus Rex Udeorum, or Jesus Christ, King of the Jews. The finished angels showcase the things that Bernini was particularly good at. So we're talking billowing drapery that at once accentuates, yet covers the figure. We're talking about heads being thrown back with mouths open, either in agony or in ecstasy, depending on your interpretation of the matter. And of gestures that are at once dramatic yet informative, allowing viewers to see and appreciate what is happening on the quote-unquote inside of these sculptures, even though we, of course, know that they're made of stone. There is certainly a sense of psychology that Bernini is able to convey using form and material. He was a master. And both of these angels, despite being separate entities, are very much alike. It's like they're the marble equivalent of maternal twins, differentiated by the expressions on their faces that are directly related to the objects they hold. The angel holding the crown of thorns, for example, is particularly emotive. The angel holds out the crown of thorns as if both presenting it to the viewer, but also as if he doesn't want it close to him, as his perfect fingers stand in direct opposition to the thorny crown. And as he does this, there's this pained expression of angelic agony that covers his face. This is in contrast with the angel holding the superscription, who cradles this item with greater calm, as if being in contact with this item, which was not an active instrument of torture, causes less spiritual turbulence. The angels that Bernini carved also demonstrate what Bernini fans know to be true, which is that his works, especially those intended to be out in the open and not, say, placed in a niche in a chapel, were not intended to be seen from any one specific angle, but rather to have multiple idea angles for viewing. The angels for the Ponte Sant'Angelo look good no matter how you're looking at them. Each angle is visually effective and, if I do say so myself, stunning. Of course, the way that these were mounted on the bridge made it so that the backs of these angels were not as important, because you're on a bridge, so if you're seeing if you're seeing the back of these angels, you on the wrong side of the bridge. Bernini was truly a narrative mastermind. He thought long and hard about how his works would be viewed, what someone coming from one side might see versus the person coming from the other, or how the figure would evolve if walked around. Interacting with a Bernini sculpture is like reading a story told from three or more points of view, each of which works on its own, but tells a more complete story when considered in total. As some of the final works of his career, these angels demonstrate the cumulative knowledge and mastery that Bernini had developed over a long and highly lucrative career, both in the technique of the sculpting, but also in the narrative conception of how these things were designed. In fact, the angels that Bernini carved were so coveted by Pope Clement IX that he decided he wanted to keep them for himself, rather than putting them on the bridge. Instead, the Pope decided to order copies that would then go on the bridge, and then he could keep Bernini's for himself. The original plan being to send them to his hometown of Pistoia, which, spoiler alert, never happened. Even so, the angels never did make it to the bridge, instead, finding their way into the Basilica of Sant Andrea delle Frate. With that move, the plot thickens just a little further, because Sant Andrea delle Frate was the church being built directly across from where Bernini was living at the time. This church was being worked on by Bernini's rival, Francesco Boromini, who was the artist with whom Bernini was in almost constant competition. Bernini was forced, essentially, to watch this project by his rival being built right outside his front door. The angels, though, were not moved into that church until after Boromini died. Now I don't know if Bernini had anything to do with the angels being moved to that particular church. But, whether intentional or not, it seems like it was an ironic choice to put Bernini's celebrated angels in the church that marked the end of his rival's career. It's like Bernini couldn't let Boromini have that one thing. The one thing he wanted, he couldn't have. Those are the only two angels we know for sure were carved by Bernini. The process of copying those two angels was entrusted to two of Bernini's assistants, or, you know, artists with whom he worked closely. There is a rumor, however, a rumor, that Bernini actually did work on the angel carrying the superscription, or, you know, the scroll that says I-N-R-I. The rumor is that his assistant sort of blocked out the marble and did some of the preliminary stuff, and then Bernini swept in and completed the rest of that angel. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but it makes for a good story. Given their direct ties with Bernini, those two angels, the one carrying the crown of thorns and the other carrying the superscription, are the ones that are most often discussed by scholars, even if Bernini had creative control over the entire project at large. It should be noted, however, that the other angels, even if they followed Bernini's designs or ideas for the project, were executed by extremely capable individuals who had learned a great deal from Bernini. This wasn't a situation in which his assistants were trying to replicate exactly what Bernini would do, but rather they worked from his designs and models, translating them into stone via their own individual styles, which, to be clear, were heavily informed by their interactions with Bernini. One of the more clear-cut examples of this is putting Bernini's version of the Angel with the Crown of Thorns beside the copy executed by Pablo Naldini. Naldini had originally trained as a painter in a more classical interpretation of the Baroque, which ultimately translated into his style as a sculptor. He couldn't hack it as a painter, but as a sculptor, he was very talented. While not classical in the purest sense of the word, Naldini's angels, including the one based on Bernini's existing example, are much simpler than the work that Bernini usually carried out himself. The drapery is more subdued, the gestures are slightly less dramatic, with heads not thrown back in ecstasy but held relatively steady. It goes to show how Bernini's assistants, who were helping him on this project, adhered closely to his original designs, but not completely. The final angel I want to discuss is the angel bearing the column, which was carved by Antonio Raggi, who had worked closely with Bernini for something like 15 years. Bernini clearly held Raji in high esteem, saying at one point that Raji was the most talented sculptor in all of Rome, other than Bernini himself, of course. The angel bearing the column shows how a very capable sculptor worked within the confines of a Bernini-led project. Now we obviously know that Bernini didn't sculpt this figure, but even if we didn't know for sure whether he did or didn't, there are some pretty dead giveaways that this is not a work by Bernini. There are additions and flourishes that just don't match up with Bernini's style, in addition to things like the hair being far less delicate and the face lacking Bernini's characteristic softness. Then there's the fact that the sculpture is oddly top-heavy. It's not graceful in its proportions. It's weird. Despite these differences, however, it's still very clear that Raji was working from Bernini's example and using his designs. The original design that Bernini provided to Raji, however, didn't quite work. The original conception of the angel was that the form of the angel would mimic that of the column, creating something of a compositional echo. How mether? The artists quickly realized that that design would not work from a technical perspective, because the marble structure of the angel's arms would not have been strong enough to support the weight of the column on top. If executed according to the original design, the arms of the angels would almost certainly have broken off. Now, for most of us, we'd think, well, can't you make the column smaller or like do something with the column so that you maintain the composition of the whole? But they couldn't do that. This is another reason why I find this angel so fascinating. No changes could be made to the column, because the column was designed to look exactly like the one that Christians believed was the actual column to which Christ was tied during his flagellation, during his whipping. That column, the alleged relic, is held in a church in Rome, the Church of St. Prasede. Thus, the idea was that people, especially pilgrims who knew these relics like the back of their hands, would have recognized that the column the angel held was a marble copy of that original. When Raji realized that translating the design into marble wouldn't work, he sacrificed the original intention to have the angel, you know, sort of echo the form of the column to preserve the appearance of the column itself, which was a critical aspect of the original design. That's why there's this odd flourish of drapery that comes behind the angel, because you needed that extra marble to support the weight of the chosen column. That's something that we don't often consider when casually enjoying art. We don't think about these logistical issues, like how design and material have to work together, particularly in the realm of sculpture. With that being said, despite some of the stylistic differences and alterations to Bernini's original design, of the eight angels not made by Bernini or copied from the ones he had already made, the angel with the column by Raji is certainly the most like Bernini. It's the one in which you can most clearly see how one of Bernini's longtime collaborators worked within Bernini's range, but produced a slightly different sculptural melody. Sculptural melody? Sure, why not? Sculptural melody. And that got me thinking, it got me noodling. In the end, the Ponte St. Angelo served as more than a conduit to the Vatican. Obviously, that's its purpose purpose, to usher people to the Vatican and, you know, get them hyped. But the Ponte St. Angelo also served as a bridge in another sense. To usher them into the territory of Bernini's greatest and most important works. The bridge also served as a showcase of the talents that Bernini worked with and trained, like Antonio Raggi and Paolo Naldini. As the bridge looked forward in this respect to the next generation of sculptors after Bernini, it also looked back in time to the bridge's Roman foundations. The Pope who commissioned Bernini to make the angels, Clement IX, also made a coin to commemorate the project. Interestingly, the coin shows the bridge with the statues of the angels, clearly showing the bridge in its modern form. On the coin, however, the bridge is not called the Ponte Sant'Angelo. It's referred to instead as the Elio Ponte, or the Alien Bridge, referring back to Hadrian. In a way, though, the bridge is also an emblem of how Christianity had won in the end, as the angels bearing the emblems of Christ's torture and crucifixion now populate a bridge once intended to celebrate an emperor. As the faithful crossed this bridge, they were going to experience one of the holiest places in Christendom, and as they did so, they were reminded of the sacrifice of the man they considered Lord while in the midst of angels. The Ponte St. Angelo and its accompanying Castel St. Angelo continued to serve as two of Rome's greatest attractions, albeit in a more secular capacity these days. The majority of those who flock across them go to admire the angels of Bernini and his assistants, and of course to gaze up at the massive Castel St. Angelo, which in 1753 got another angel of its own, a massive bronze statue of the archangel Michael by Flemish sculptor Peter Anton von Worschefeld. I know absolutely nothing about Worschefeld, but I would assume that in taking on this commission, he couldn't help but think of Bernini's precedent and how this archangel would form a visual pendant to those on the bridge beneath it. Even as it paid homage to the event, St. Michael's miraculous appearance to Pope Gregory, that first associated this plot of Roman land and river with the stuff of angels. That is all I have historically speaking, but I did want to do a little addendum that has no bearing on anything, other than I'm a huge nerd who genuinely gets very excited about these things. As I said at the top of the episode, when I hang out on the Ponte Sant'Angelo, which I don't do that often, but when I do, it makes me feel like I could potentially find myself in the midst of a crazy mystery, like the ones of Dan Brown and Steve Barry. Like I could be Nicolas Cage in National Treasure. As I also said, one of Dan Brown's books does take place in Rome, Angels and Demons. For the record, I enjoyed those books and movies, even though they are ridiculous and some of the movies are objectively bad. I still enjoyed them. And the soundtracks by Hans Zimmer are masterpieces. They are fantastic. The thing is, Dan Brown pissed off a lot of Catholics with the book The Da Vinci Code, which was filmed first despite being second in the series of books. And once DaVinci Code fever hit, there was no way in hell, purgatory, or heaven that the Vatican was going to let a film crew for angels and demons into the Vatican or any church in Rome. Given that they were banned from filming in these places, the film crew had to recreate sites on a sound stage or find other places in Italy that could double as the needed locations. So, for example, the Palace of Caserta near Naples was cast, if you will, as the Vatican. I did read an article though saying that the film sent one of its cameramen with this teeny tiny camera into Rome posing as a tourist to take footage of these places so that they could recreate them elsewhere. Which uh that's that's I found my dream job, being a spy for Big Hollywood. And it's so weird because there'll be shots of actual Roman sites, and then when you start to actually look at the close-ups, you realize that up-close filming was done elsewhere. This occurred in particular with the Piazza Novona. The filmmakers had to recreate Bernini's fountain and construct the Piazza Novona in a parking lot. And you know what? I think they did a good job. The scenes on the Ponte St. Angelo and outside the Castel St. Angelo seem to have been filmed on location. There's even a behind-the-scenes interview with Tom Hanks that takes place in front of the Castel St. Angelo, so he was clearly there. And there's this awesome scene in which motorcyclists very dramatically zoom over the Ponte St. Angelo, which, let it be known, became a pedestrian bridge in 2000. There are no cars, there are no motorcycles. You might get the odd rogue bicycle, but that's about it. But you have these motorcyclists zooming across the bridge, and the camera follows them, sweeping across the bridge and past the angels, and then going up into the air, sweeping up towards the bronze angel on the top of the Castel St. Angelo. It's a beautiful shot, and it gives you a sense of how these two monuments and the angels that inhabit them ultimately work together to produce meaning. Of course, more highbrow individuals will know that the Castel St. Angelo and its bridge are also an important location in the opera Tosca by Giacomo Puccini, which, spoiler alert, seriously, if you ever plan to attend the opera Tosca, stop listening, ends when Floria Tosca, the main character, jumps to her death from the Castel St. Angelo to the pavement beneath. Personally, never seen Tosca, and between you and me, just you and me, I don't plan on seeing Tosca. I did, however, look into some stage sets for Tosca, and some of them recreate the Castel St. Angelo from above, which is delightful, even if something super terrible happens there. But I do credit that knowledge to fellow American Academy in Rome fellow, brilliant opera enthusiast, and my new buddy, Therese Wadden. And you better bet that I then told her about a whole filming of angels and demons, and I feel like that encapsulates our personalities very well. This excursus, this like random addendum, all goes to show how both the Ponte St. Angelo and the Castel Sant'Angelo continue to capture our imaginations and act as a point of inspiration even after nearly 2,000 years. They have most certainly captured mine. That is officially all I have for you on the Ponte Sant'Angelo and the man who created its angels, John Lorenzo Bernini. As always, there are source materials and images posted on the podcast website, stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. As for my main sources, I have to give a huge shout out to Professor Mark Weill, who used to be a professor at Wash You, where I go to school, and literally wrote the book on the Ponte Sant'Angelo. I checked the book out from the library here at the American Academy in Rome, no big deal. And inside of it was an inscription by Professor Weill, which I thought was the best thing ever. Other authors I turned to for this episode include Howard Hibbard, who wrote a great overview book about Bernini. His books in general are very accessible to anyone who wants to know more, but is perhaps trepidatious about jumping into academic books. I highly, highly recommend Howard Hibbard. I also read some books in Italian by Maria Grazia Tolomeo, including one that she co-edited with Luisa Cardili Aloisi, that documents the restoration process of the Ponte Sant'Angelo in the 1980s, which was fascinating. There's also lots of websites on which you can find some decent information, and I of course will link all of that on the podcast's website. It's kind of hard to do Gus Corner because I haven't seen him since January 10th, and my heart is breaking because I love him so much. But I have been getting regular reports and pictures and videos assuring me that he is very well, very happy, and very well fed. These days he gets two woks a day, and he's getting visits from my nieces who absolutely love him. As I'm recording this, there's a little piece of Gus hair that is stuck to my microphone pop filter that I have not removed yet because it is a piece of him. That's how much I love him. If you liked this episode, if you've been enjoying the podcast, which I hope that you are, I would really appreciate it if you left me a review or just even a star rating on iTunes. And of course, wherever else you listen. That lets me know that I'm doing a good job, and quite frankly, just makes me happy. That is why I do this podcast. I think it puts something positive into the world, even if it isn't perfect, and it makes me happy. So if you would leave a review, I would greatly appreciate it. Uh yeah, I don't know when the next episode is going to be up, whoever knows, but there will be another one. No worries. I love doing this, I have my microphone with me, I have a fancy new microphone stand, and the show shall go on. I send a big thank you to the providers of the royalty free music featured in the intro and the outro of the podcast. The first song you hear is a version of Box Brandenburg Concerto number four by Kevin McLeod, and the second jauntier tune is a little ditty called Success Dreams. As always, I am hoping that you are all very well. I thank you for sticking with me until the end of the episode. This was a long one. And of course, I hope that you take the time to look at something beautiful today. Alla prossima. This time I will demonstrate to you how they say goodbye when on the phone in Italy, where they just keep repeating the word chow and hope that the other person hangs up. It goes something like this Ciao Chow Chow Chow Chow Chow Chow Chow Chow Chow Chow Chow.