End of
fifth century
Repeatedly
transformed and restored
In 1190
Celestine III Orsini (1191/98) had the relics of Sts. Gordian and Epimachus
placed under the altar
In the
years 1940/41 the church was stripped of the Baroque decorations
“The current
building, in spite of the too drastic restorations, is essentially a
well-preserved basilica, of a type that Krautheimer (1980) sees characteristic
of a group of parish churches (S. Stefano del Cacco, S. Salvatore in Onda)
already since the end of the eleventh century, and that at Porta Latina it
appears even in a convent church. The Romanesque masonry is considered by
Krautheimer similar to that of St. Clement, therefore of the first decades of
the twelfth century. One would have to conclude that the architectural
renovation was earlier than the time of the dedication, perhaps to bring back
to the period (1144) in which the church is to join the Lateran Chapter, and
that the placement of the relics of Gordian and Epimachus and the subsequent
consecration would mark the end of a vast work of renewal of the church”
(Serena Romano)
At the end
of the sixteenth century a group of Portuguese men had founded in the church,
abandoned at the time, a gay fraternity
They used
to celebrate gay marriage during which they would take communion, read the
gospel of the wedding and then they would sleep and dwell together in the
premises
Gable
end with palm leaves, lilies and roses globe (coat of arms of the patron) from the nearby Oratory of S. Giovanni in Oleo
1658 by Francesco Borromini (1599/1667) for
Cardinal Francesco Paolucci
Two rows of
five ancient columns each: the first two made out of pavonazzetto marble from
Turkey, the others of cipolin marble and granite
“The
basilica is characterized by a sense of recovery of the ancient, which is the
main theme of the culture of the twelfth century and here is revealed above all
in the use of ancient columns with Ionic capitals (four really beautiful, to
support the round arches in the portico and ten in the nave) but also in the
relief with scrolls and small heads adapted as step in the chancel” (Serena
Romano)
Important
fresco cycle “46
scenes from the Old and New Testament” about 1190
PRESBYTERY
Frescoes “Symbols
of the Evangelists” and “The 24 Elders of the Apocalypse” about 1190
Floor of
the presbytery in opus sectile with colored marbles
“The cycle
of Porta Latina is a very important milestone in the group so called
'Umbrian-Roman' of the testamentary cycles. (...) Each cycle of this group
combines common traits, especially iconographic, with particular
characteristics, and certainly, from the point of view of style, each of them
was done a different workshop: and the one of Porta Latina appears attentive to
elaborations from the classicist and antiquarian heritage, whose elements are
preserved and handed down especially through the decorative repertoire and the
systems of fiction and architectural illusion” (Serena Romano)
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