Santa Maria della Pace

the church in Rome

Santa Maria della Pace is a church in Rome, central Italy, not far from Piazza Navona. The building lies in rione Ponte.

The current building was built on the foundations of the pre existing church of Sant'Andrea de Aquarizariis in 1482, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV. The church was rededicated to the Virgin Mary to commemorate a miraculous bleeding of a Madonna image there in 1480. The author of the original design is not known, though Baccio Pontelli has been proposed. In 1656–67 Pope Alexander VII commissioned Pietro da Cortona to enlarge the tiny Piazza della Pace in front of the 15th century church of Santa Maria, to accommodate the carriages of its wealthy parishioners. Several houses had to be demolished. This also involved the design of a new Baroque facade complete with semicircular portico. The newly formed piazza, focused on the church facade even in its architectural detailing, had the additional benefits of facilitating the turning of coaches which had become so fashionable with the Roman nobility of the time and creating an ingenious unified ensemble of the church in its urban setting. The play of concave and convex forms at varying scales in and around the predominant main facade masks the neighboring buildings, extends the apparent breadth of the facade and so increases the visual impact on the spectator physically confined by the small trapezoidal piazza. The monumental effect of the plasticity of forms, spatial layering and chiarascuro lighting effects belies the actual scale of this urban intervention. The inscription around the porch architrave is taken from Psalm 72: SUSCIPIANT MONTES PACEM POPULO ET COLLES IUSTITIAM ("The mountains shall bring peace to the people; and the hills, justice"). This reference to the 'mountains' of the coat of arms of the Chigi family, to which Alexander VII belonged, is presumably an allusion to the benefits of his papal reign. Oak leaf motifs, another Chigi family emblem, can also be found on the facade. On the upper facade, Cortona had the curved travertine panels cut to make grained matching patterns, in an unusual use of this particular material.

The interior, which can be reached from the original fifteenth century door, has a short nave with cruciform vaulting and a tribune surmounted by a cupola. Cortona articulated the interior of the dome with octagonal coffering and a series of ribs radiating from the lantern. This is an early example of combining these two forms of dome decoration and was employed by Gianlorenzo Bernini in his later churches at Ariccia and Castelgandolfo. Carlo Maderno designed the high altar (1614) to enframe the venerable icon of the Madonna and Child.

Raphael began to fresco the Sibyls receiving angelic instruction (1514) above the arch of the Chigi Chapel, the first altar on your right, commissioned by Agostino Chigi, the papal banker. The Deposition over the altar is by Cosimo Fancelli.

The second chapel on the right, the Cesi Chapel, was designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, and has a very fine Renaissance decoration on the external arch by Simone Mosca, as well as two small frescoes, the Creation of Eve and the Original Sin by Rosso Fiorentino.