Paolo is Secretly Mafia...

I went on my first site-visit with my favorite professor, Paolo Alei, to Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. A site-visit is when we have class lectures inside of or in front of what we are studying. Thursday's focus was the Carafa Chapel, painted by Filippino Lippi in the late 15th c. for Cardinal Oliviero Carafa. Normally you have to look in on the chapel from outside the balustrades, but Paolo just strolls into the cathedral and bribes a priest to open the chapel for us and even set up chairs for my small class to sit in inside the chapel!

I walked through those gates and had a 2 hour lecture in the Carafa Chapel!
Blame crappy picture quality on Wikipedia - I'll update this later with a better one of my own.

Cardinal Oliviero Carafa was a papal hopeful after the death of Pope Alexander VI Borgia, but he was beat out by Cardinal Giuliano (now Pope Julius II) della Rovere. But everyone at the time knew that he was on the path to becoming pope, so he had his own chapel created in the central cathedral of the Dominican order. This chapel even had a small square room off the the left where only Cardinal Carafa could enter (sometimes with another clergyman). This room was decorated with scenes of the lives of Lucretia and Virginia - two Roman stories of women of superior chastity - which also had a window that looked out onto the right wall of the chapel that has a fresco of St. Thomas Aquinas featuring his conversation with the crucifix and his miracle of chastity and the presentation of his Summa Theologica. In this small room Carafa would regularly practice self-flagellation. All of the imagery that promotes chastity and virginity combined with his self-flagellation habits lead me to think he had some big issues with sexuality. What those might be exactly I am not sure of, but I am definitely going to ask Paolo.

The altarpiece shows an annunciation scene - Mary receiving the news from the archangel Gabriel that she was to bear the son of God. But instead of looking joyful upon receiving the news she looks mournful. Her eyes gaze down onto the altar in front of the painting. One of the most important sacraments of the Catholic church takes place on the altar - transubstantiation. This is the moment when the priest blesses the host and it becomes the body and blood of Christ in truth. This is what Mary sees: her son's future crucifixion. It is a moment of alpha and omega, a beginning and an end occurring simultaneously. 


Honestly this entire chapel is amazing. I highly recommend visiting it in Santa Maria sopra Minerva. It is divine! And the church is located above the platform that was previously home to temples honoring Isis and Minerva (Greek - Athena) and is now dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Three of the most influential female religious figures have all made a home here. This is why I love Rome - everything was at some point something else, which further enhances the meaning of the things that currently occupy that space or use those stones.