Saturday, June 27, 2015

ORATORY OF St. JOHN IN OIL

ORATORIO DI S. GIOVANNI IN OLEO


Maybe a martyrium (building associated with the martyrdom of a saint) of the fifth century where St. John the Evangelist would have been plunged into boiling oil in the year 95 AD

According to tradition, he resisted for so long that was believed to be a powerful wizard. He was then released and exiled to Patmos where he wrote the Book of Revelation of the Bible

Renewed 1509 by Baldassare Peruzzi (1481/1536) or Antonio Cordini aka Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1483/1546) for Julius II Della Rovere (1503/13)

Restored 1658 by Francesco Borromini (1599/1667) for Cardinal Francesco Paolucci

The beautiful gable end with palm leaves, lilies and roses globe (the coat of arms of the patron) and cross is a copy in cement of the original in stucco now preserved in the nearby church of S. Giovanni a Porta Latina

INTERIOR

Restored in 1716

Stucco and paintings “Stories of St. John the Evangelist” about 1658/60 by Lazzaro Baldi (about 1624/1703)

“Here Lazzaro Baldi wanted to recover the, by then ancient, classicism of Domenichino as he was depicting an easy, basic story. Nevertheless in the Vision of St. John in Patmos he already implemented the immersion of the figure in an atmospheric space, with a use of the light similar to Pietro da Cortona, something in which he would have succeeded much better between 1660 and 1665 in his masterpiece, the painting of the same subject in St. John Lateran, where he obtained one of the highest results of Pietro da Cortona's school and at the same time he anticipated the plein-air painting typical of much of the eighteenth-century” (Evelina Borea – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)

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