The building’s long history and spiritual connotations evidently lead to the creation of myths surrounding it that were tacked onto its true historical identity. The Grand Tour resulted in the painter Giovanni Paolo Panini and etcher Giovanni Battista Piranesi creating highly detailed views of the interiors — with some added drama and a good sprinkling of figments of their imagination. Each favoured a particular vision of what the space was like and therefore privileged that in their representations. By separating its historical identity from the reality of the building’s history and clearly defining the two, Camerlenghi understands and reconciles the role of hearsay and myth in the histories that surround a remarkably long-lasting edifice.
One of the other things that Camerlenghi addresses extremely well is the acceptance of loss. The basilica, while considered widely to be a repository of important objects of both spiritual and historical interest, also exerts its own identity. Its inopportune destruction — which one conspiracy theory attributed to the Rothschild family, which had arrived in Rome only five days before the fire — grants the book the power of postulating while being authoritative, an accomplishment that is hard to find in contemporary art history. Art historians, as a group, tend to be overly sensitive to the loss of the very objects that they study (and, if I may say so, almost venerate). The pinning for the old does exist, but it refuses to overpower and overwhelm the ability to prioritise and present information in a critical manner.
Read the full review of Nicola Camerlenghi’s book, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls: A Roman Basilica, from Antiquity to the Modern Era (CUP, 2018), here: http://dartreview.com/st-pauls-outside-the-walls/
