ROME (AP) – As in other parts of Europe, museums and art galleries closed in Italy in the spring and again in the fall to contain the spread of COVID-19, leaving virtual tours as the best option for lovers of art that wanted to see the treasures held by institutions such as the Uffizi Galleries in Florence and the Vatican Museums in Rome.
But some refined pieces of Italy’s cultural heritage remain on display for personal viewing inside the country’s churches, which remained open during the fall of the virus. Some churches have collections of Renaissance art and iconography that would be the envy of any museum.
Rome residents – and, in a normal year, tourists – can admire Michelangelo and Caravaggio’s masterpieces in the city’s magnificent cathedrals and churches.
“The emotions and sensations experienced at the entrance are no less than those experienced at the entrance to museums,” said art historian Benedetta Mazzanobile, who tours the works of art in Roman churches in French, Spanish and Portuguese.
San Luigi dei Francesi, the church of the French community in Rome, has three majestic works by the 16th century painter Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio. Visitors who deposit a coin to illuminate the church’s Contarelli Chapel can enjoy paintings centered around the life of St. Matthew.
Two other Caravaggio paintings, depicting the crucifixion of St. Peter and the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, can be admired in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo along with the “Assumption” by Annibale Carracci.
The works of another Renaissance master, Raphael, can be found in several churches in Rome, including Santa Maria della Pace. Here the artist painted “Sybils”, a fresco also known as “Sybils receiving instructions from the Angels”, starting around 1514.
The pandemic interfered with plans to mark 500 years since Raphael’s death. In Rome, Raphael’s largest exhibition opened in March and closed three days later, when the Italian government ordered the closure nationwide. The exhibition was reopened in June as restrictions were lifted and operated until the end of the summer.
A work of art in itself, the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Basilica is full of masterpieces, including Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” an moving sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Christ.
The Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria has a lesser known but strongly evocative marble sculpture by the Baroque architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa”.
That Italian churches can now admire art without having to compete with the usual crowd of tourists is a mixed blessing, Mazzanobile said.
“Certainly the pandemic has allowed us to reflect on the hordes of tourists who would now invade, sometimes in an unworthy way, the streets and galleries of museums,” she said. “But I certainly think that, like me, most guides and tournament leaders are waiting for those hordes.”