NEWS FEATURE: Show of Papal Portraits Reveals Faces of Pontiffs Over Five Centuries

c. 2005 Religion News Service ROME _ An unusual exhibition of papal portraits gives a rare glimpse into the lives and times of the popes over a span of five centuries, starting with the bellicose but art-loving Julius II, who reigned in the 1500s. “Popes in Pose: From the Renaissance to John Paul II,” at […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

ROME _ An unusual exhibition of papal portraits gives a rare glimpse into the lives and times of the popes over a span of five centuries, starting with the bellicose but art-loving Julius II, who reigned in the 1500s.

“Popes in Pose: From the Renaissance to John Paul II,” at the Palazzo Braschi until Feb. 13, includes paintings and sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Pietro da Cortona and the 20th century sculptor Giacomo Manz _ much of it on loan from museums and private collections. But equally interesting are works by lesser known or anonymous artists.


In keeping with the pope’s pre-1870 dual role of political as well as religious ruler, many of the paintings speak more of temporal power and social prestige than they do of the spiritual. Some popes raise a hand in blessing, but others hold a treaty or an architectural plan.

The white-bearded Julius II (1503-1513) posed for Raphael in 1511 with eyes austerely downcast and lips clamped firmly shut, but the portrait gives clues to a more exuberant character in the golden tassels adorning his throne and the six jeweled rings on his fingers.

This was a pope who won election with bribes, personally led his troops into battle throughout central Italy to consolidate his rule over the Papal States and unwittingly paved the way to the Reformation by selling indulgences to finance the building of the new St. Peter’s Basilica.

Nevertheless, he is best remembered as a patron of the arts, so it is fitting after all that his portrait set the pattern for those of his successors over centuries to come.

The classic pose shows the pope seated in three-quarter view, wearing a mozzetta, which is a short, red velvet cape trimmed in ermine, over a white linen and silk garment called a rochet. His head is adorned with a camaura, a close-fitting, ermine-trimmed, red velvet cap. It is only in the early 18th century that the more familiar skullcap known as the zucchetto starts to replace the camaura in the portraits.

Julius II’s portrait is a copy made in the 16th or 17th century of the original Raphael, which hangs in the National Gallery in London where it presently is one of the major works in an exhibition on “Raphael: From Urbino to Rome.”

The saddest portrait in the show is by Francesco Bassano, of a melancholy Urban VII, whose 12-day reign, Sept. 15-27, 1590, was one of the shortest in history. Stricken with malaria the night after his election, he nevertheless managed to sit for his portrait several days before his death.


Alexander VII (1655-1667) figures in two paintings that break the Raphael mold and a third that returns to it. As pope he led a hectic political life, was a foe of Jansenism, welcomed the converted Queen Christina of Sweden to Rome and allowed Jesuit missionaries in China to use Chinese rites. But his most important legacy is the Bernini colonnades on either side of St. Peter’s Square.

In his first appearance in the show, an imposing canvas by Pier Leone Ghezzi shows him in 1652 when, as Fabio Chigi, secretary of state to Pope Innocent X, he kneels with his long black taffeta cloak, the cappa magna, spread out behind him, to receive a cardinal’s hat from the hands of the pope he was soon to succeed. Cardinals look on in boredom, and a window framed by columns shows a view of Castel Sant’Angelo.

In his next portrait, this one by Giovanni Maria Morandi, it is May 27, 1655, and Alexander VII has been pope for a month. He is shown making his first public appearance in the streets of Rome, apparently kneeling before a monstrance, a vessel of precious metal containing the Blessed Sacrament, as he is carried on a litter in a Corpus Domini procession.

Appearances are deceiving. In reality, the pope is seated on an armchair designed by Bernini to give the appearance of kneeling without the fatigue.

At the bottom of the canvas are the heads and shoulder of the six litter-carriers. Their ruddy faces workmen’s are in sharp contrast to the pale, aesthetic-looking pope with his neat black mustache and beard and trailing cappa magna of gold brocade.

Despite his failing health, John Paul II has traveled from the Vatican to St. John in Lateran in prayer before a monstrance each June for the same feast, now more commonly known as Corpus Christi. His vehicle, however, is an open, flat-bed truck.


A third portrait of Alexander VII, attributed to Guido Ubaldo Abbatini, shows him turning his back on the pomp and ceremony of the earlier works. Seated and dressed in the traditional red velvet and ermine, he is holding a breviary in one hand and rests his other hand on a skull he kept in his bedroom to remind him of the vanity of existence.

Beginning with the portrait of the clean-shaven Pius VII (1800-1823), the popes take on a more contemporary look _ with the striking exception of Cesare Fracassini’s depiction of Pius IX (1846-1878).

The oval portrait, painted in pastels and ornately framed in gilt, shows Pius IX crowned with a gold and silver papal tiara made up of three gem-encrusted diadems. They represent the pope’s universal episcopate, his supremacy of jurisdiction and his temporal power.

Pius IX proclaimed the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary and papal infallibility and published a “Syllabus of Errors” that condemned much of the modern world. His papacy was the longest on record, but he spent his last year’s as a self-imposed “prisoner” in the Vatican to protest the incorporation of Rome and the papal states into a united Italy in 1870.

In a sign of changing times, no pope has worn the tiara since Paul VI

(1963-1978) dispensed with much of the remaining papal pomp.

Benedict XV (1914-1922), who reigned during World War I, which he deplored as a “useless slaughter,” is painted by Giacomo Grosso kneeling in prayer, and the portrait of Pius XII (1939-1958), the World War II pope, shows him gazing sternly into an uncertain future.


John XXIII (1958-1963) has a genial look in a gilded bronze head by Manzu. He wears the by now old-fashioned camauro and seems almost to be smiling.

Paul VI collected modern art, which he gave to the Vatican Museums, and his portrait by Dina Bellotti is fittingly modern. Painted with a flare of impressionism, it shows the pope seated in profile before a microphone, about to begin a radio broadcast.

John Paul II was painted by the Russian artist Natalia Tsarkova, who also did a posthumous portrait of John Paul I. The full-length portrait of the reigning pope is the most dramatic in the exhibition.

Standing in St. Peter’s Square with St. Peter’s Basilica behind him, John Paul is shown wearing gold vestments and miter and holding a shepherd’s crook on which hangs a small crucifix. A threatening sky above conjures up the turmoil of his times.

MO/RB END RNS

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