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ne of the things I find fascinating,” says Dr. Elizabeth Lev, Romebased b d author, professor of art history and ultimate tour guide of St. Peter’s Basilica, “is that when you bring people in here, you can feel them open. Even if they arrive with a very cynical attitude, you can feel them just Dr. Elizabeth Lev bathing in

of this place.” Lev says it’s the convergence of everything on this spot that cracks open the shell. It’s art, it’s history, it’s the tomb of St. Peter, the rock upon whom Christ himself said he would build his church. “And the person who understands this better than anyone else is none other than our Benedict XVI,” she says, citing his writing about how beauty wounds, how beauty is like a dart, like an arrow that pierces. “And once you’re pierced,” she observes, “you’re vulnerable.” She has come to consider the masters who created St. Peter’s — Michelangelo, Bernini, Raphael, Bramonte — as her friends. “When you come here, you find your friends pouring their hearts out to you,” she says. “Through their art and architecture they’re telling you what they know, what they’ve seen, what they understand and what they believe.” Eventually, Lev says, the questions fall away. “As you keep doing your research, you realize what they’re saying is grounded in reality. It’s grounded in a picture where all of the pieces fit.”

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et us begin with the basilica itself. Its size stuns most first-time visitors. On the floor can be found outlines of the foundations of other major cathedrals from around the world, demonstrating how easily it dwarfs them. Lev considers the layout of the basilica as she stands at the front door and looks toward the altar. “You start with this incredibly long nave,” she says. “What is it telling you if not that life is a long journey that ends in the vertical, up toward heaven? That’s what the dome is all about.” Looking to the right, where the intricate Pietà Michelangelo sculpted when he was 24 greets visitors, Lev says the artist used the human form to help us understand both God and the church in the basilica. “The Jesus we see in the Pietà is an exquisite and poignant mixture of God and man,” she says. The art history professor in her recognizes the proportions of Christ’s body as those of a Greek god, yet in his mother’s arms, he also is a lifeless man. Lev believes the basilica’s dome and the two lateral apses that support it, designed by Michelangelo when he was 72, can be interpreted as a head and shoulders. “He gives us a tangible understanding of the church as the body of Christ, with a head and shoulders re-emerging after the long trial of the Protestant Reformation,” she says. Of course the basilica was constructed over a period of more than 100 years, with the groundbreaking in

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April 1506 and the consecration in November 1626. So it was Bernini — not born until 40 years after Michelangelo’s death — who brought the effort to a close, spending his entire life trying to represent the Holy Spirit within the basilica, according to Lev. Bernini made his most significant contributions to St. Peter’s at two different stages of his life as well. He began designing the baldacchino — the large bronze canopy over the altar — when he was just 25. “If you look at the corners of the bronze canopy, you can see the tassels are at an angle,” Lev explains. “It gives you a very faint sense of the wind moving underneath it. Remember,” she continues, “Jesus breathes on the Apostles and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” Visitors looking up into the canopy will indeed find an image of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.

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through his art. We have to understand that as he worked “So we have this there were many people around him saying, ‘This is what idea of the Holy Spirit this place is about.’ It was up to him to bring that all directly over the altar together.” where the pope celebrates Mass, which is directly over the In addition, says Lev, Bernini tomb of St. Peter,” she points out. “And then, we must be considered as a product have a gentle puff of air that goes out to the four of the era in which he lived. corners of the world.” “Bernini was an “We have to think about Are these conclusions Lev has drawn or are these artist, so he spoke the geography, the history, the the known intentions of the artists? to us through his poetry and the theology of his “My premise always is this,” Lev says. “If Bernini art. As he worked time,” she explains. “Bernini was could write, he would have been a writer. But there were many clearly successful in transmitting he was an artist, so he spoke to us people around him the message of the church. Why else would they have proceeded saying, ‘This is to let him decorate the rest of what this place is the basilica?” about.’ It was up to Lev acknowledges this him to bring that all thinking can be foreign to us together.” today. “We are so divorced from a world in which an artist would profess faith,” she says. “But Bernini is so Catholic. We know he went to Mass daily. He recognized that the Incarnation is the most beautiful thing that ever happened in the world.” Twenty-five years after designing the canopy, Lev says he was successful in completing his meditation on the Holy Spirit by designing the window and the altar behind the main altar. “He unites all the art, painting, sculpture and architecture in the background that features the Chair of St. Peter and the window with the Holy Spirit, which can be seen from anywhere in the basilica,” she says.

A meditation on the tomb of Alexander VII Art historian Dr. Elizabeth Lev shares a few thoughts on the basilica’s famous tomb of Pope Alexander VII, who requested that it be designed by his friend, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. “In a world in which we have so many reality shows, it’s interesting to note that Bernini lived in an era when theatre was everything. People are still fascinated by other people’s lives.

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How can this not resonate with us? The pope was very concerned that he should die a good death. He even had Bernini make him a little wooden coffin which he kept open on his desk as a reminder that you know not the day or the hour. You need to be ready. On his tomb, the pope is represented kneeling in prayer. He is not sitting in state, he’s just talking to God. His head is bare. You can

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see the papal tiara—that symbol of authority—is basically shoved under his robe. We sense the lightness of his spirit. And right through the middle of the design is this glorious red theatre curtain. This was the age of Shakespeare who was telling us that all the world’s a stage and that men and women are merely players. The curtain will come down and then you will have to present your show—your

St. Anselm, bishop and doctor of the church April 21 | St. George, martyr and St. Adalbert, bishop and m

umpteenth time, she stops to enjoy the antics of a team working to change a light bulb in the ceiling. It’s no small task as someone who has managed to climb into the ceiling lowers the original to a crew on the ground. “I’ve actually seen them suspended from the ceiling polishing the canopy,” she says, smiling at the memory. Does she think all of the people who work at the basilica understand the magnitude of what the building represents? “It’s like any parish,” she says. “I don’t think every person you encounter is going to be the perfect example of the club you want to join.” But then she thinks back to an evening when she was giving a private after-hours tour of the Sistine Chapel to a group of seminarians and religious (the chapel is located directly next door to the basilica). “They had arranged for permission to sing in the chapel and they were offering these beautiful, liturgical pieces,” she says. Suddenly, she noticed the custodian in the chapel was singing along. “I asked him, ‘Where did that come from?’” she says. “I spent some time in the seminary as a young man,” he told her. “What’s really wonderful about the Christian faith,” Lev says, “is that it brings such beautiful stories to light. It really does enrich the people who are connected with it in many ways.” “He starts thinking like a movie director, not just a sculptor. He was similar to Blessed John Paul II in that way. He had the capacity to understand what it takes to resonate with an audience.” As Lev strolls through St. Peter’s Basilica for the

own work of art—to the ultimate critic who is, of course, God. What a way of looking at life: to see every little thing you do, every action, every decision as part of your story. We see Michelangelo choosing what he’s going to add here or polish there. We are Michelangelo, we are Bernini. We can all understand what a good death is because we watched Blessed John Paul II die. Through that huge media structure he allowed us closer to the papal deathbed than

Dr. Elizabeth Lev’s most recently published book, The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy’s Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de’Medici, can be found at Amazon.com.

anyone in the history of the papacy. And he did that so we would all experience his utter certainty that he was going to heaven. What a final magisterial teaching. It’s really a remarkable message. That’s the power of St. Peter’s Basilica. You realize that the men who are sitting in St. Peter’s chair today are saying the exact same thing as the man who was pope at the moment it was being built in the 1600s. It’s enough to make you rethink a few things in your own life.”

martyr April 23 | St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen, priest and martyr April 24 | St. Mark, evangelist April 25 | St. Peter Chanel, priest and martyr April 28 | St. Pius V, pope April 30

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St. Paul Outside the Walls

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