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Galleria Sciarra

Typology: Place of historical interest

Addresses

Address: Via Marco Minghetti
Zone: Rione Trevi (Quirinale-Tritone-Barberini) (Roma centro)
Address: Piazza dell'Oratorio
Zone: Rione Trevi (Quirinale-Tritone-Barberini) (Roma centro)

Opening times

Mon-Tue 10am-8pm

Closed Monday and 25 December

Description

The Galleria Sciarra is a covered pedestrian passageway between Via Marco Minghetti and Piazza dell'Oratorio.

Work began in 1886 at the behest of Prince Maffeo Sciarra, who had already established the editorial office of the daily newspaper La Tribuna inside his palace in 1883, to which he had added the literary magazine Cronache Bizantine, continuing the publication of the publisher Sommalunga. The "Byzantine" space is the stylistic ideal of the gallery, which becomes the headquarters of the magazine of the same name directed by Gabriele D'Annunzio.

The gallery was designed by architect Giulio De Angelis, who designed a pedestrian courtyard with a cruciform plan, covered by an elegant ribbed pavilion vault in iron and glass. The two entrance halls are embellished with slender painted cast-iron columns which, despite their apparent lightness, perform load-bearing functions.

The entire decorative system, including the wrought iron elements, was created by the painter Gabriele Cellini, who followed the iconographic project of the man of letters Giulio Salvatori. The decorations, made of terracotta, mix different styles. Cellini reworked archaic Greek and Etruscan motifs and composed them with Renaissance designs, accompanied by oriental and Egyptian reminiscences. Painting thus tends to overlap with architecture. On the first floor, over the large architraved void of the entrance, there is a triple lancet window marked by pilasters with anthropomorphic capitals, supporting a frame on which appears the inscription in Roman characters "MDCCCLXXXVIII" (1888), the year of completion of the work. Towards the glass dome, the architecture tends towards greater simplicity. The paintings also became lighter and the three-mullioned windows gradually reduced in height in order to make the structure more slender, ending in a projecting cornice. Cellini's decorations, carried out using the encaustic technique, have as their theme the "Glorification of woman", moving away from D'Annunzio's ideal of a modern, seductive woman. On the upper levels, women appear in their virtues, as indicated by the scroll under each figure: "La Pudica", "La Sobria", "La Forte", "L'Umile", "La Prudente", "La Paziente", "La Benigna", "La Signora", "La Fedele", "L'Amabile", "La Misericordiosa". On the ground floor there are some scenes of bourgeois daily life such as: "The care of the garden", "The domestic lunch", "The gallant conversation". In the latter scene a portrait of D'Annunzio himself can be glimpsed.

The dominant theme is therefore the exaltation of women as angels of the hearth, bride and mother. Carolina Colonna Sciarra, woman par excellence because she was the mother of Prince Maffeo, is particularly exalted through the recurring use of the initials CCS, the acronym of her name, in the shields accompanied on the entrance panels by the family coat of arms, composed of the Barberini and Colonna families with the church pole in the centre and the inscription MS, that is Maffeo Sciarra.

The two wings of the gallery are two storeys high and have a very refined coffered ceiling, supported by the double pillar-column structure, finely decorated, alternating with the French doors with black frames. The full-height central room, on the other hand, which is three times higher than the two sides, is surmounted by a luminous glass dome with a visible dark iron structure. The same material is used in the details of the parapets, balconies and wrought iron windows, also by Cellini. As a whole, the Sciarra Gallery has a dual soul, in step with the times in its use of large glass surfaces and iron elements, and more nostalgic and classical in its rich decorative apparatus and architectural forms.

See also

Culture and leisure › Cultural heritage › Exhibition venues
Last checked: 2021-04-22 15:11
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