A Mirror for the Pope: Mapping the "Corpus Christi" in the Galleria Delle Carte Geografiche

• Autores: Pauline Moffitt Watts
• Localización: I Tatti studies: essays in the Renaissance, ISSN 0393-5949, Nº. 10, 2005, págs. 173-192
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Analyzes the frescoes adorning the vault of the Galleria delle Carte Geografiche in the Vatican Palace, painted 1578-81 under Pope Gregory XIII (1502-85). The frescoes were inspired by 12th-century Cistercian abbot St. Bernard of Clairvaux's 'De Consideratione ad Eugenium Papam Tertiam Libri Quinque' (1148-53), a practical manual for the pope as the "Vicar of Christ," which Gregory XIII had read to him every day during dinner. While partly a reaction against Protestantism, the program was basically a traditional celebration of the powers of the papacy. The pope had only one body but two souls: one the timeless Vicar of Christ, the other a man engaged in history.