The Scala Regia, or "royal
staircase," is part of the formal entrance to the Vatican and connects the
Apostolic Palace to St. Peter's Basilica. Commissioned to Bernini for
restoration in 1663, it was actually built by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger.
Combining art and
architecture, sculpture and decoration in an illusionistic ensemble, this
monumental staircase served as the main entrance to the Vatican Palace, as well
as the principal connection between the palace and St Peter's basilica. The
monument also encapsulates the essence of Bernini's working procedure as
architect and designer as well as his creative response to both structural
challenges and iconographic concerns.
The Scala Regia,
the ceremonial staircase, is one of Bernini’s most brilliant concepts. Exploiting
the fact that the existing walls within which it had to be inserted were not
parallel, he dramatized the perspective effect by making the two rows of ionic
columns which flank the staircase converge and gradually diminish in height as
they rise. Light falls from a concealed source at the half-landing and from a
window at the top of the lower flight.
At the bottom
landing Bernini placed an equestrian statue of the Emperor Constantine at the
moment of his conversion, at the top, where the staircase was narrowest,
Bernini set them against the wall and farther down where it widened, and he
moved them toward the middle, a little away from the wall. That way they were
all in line and when you came from below and looked up, your eye followed the
columns and you assumed the steps were the same width all the way up. The
columns weren’t the same height either. At the top of the long funnel where the
ceiling was lower they were necessarily shorter. You noticed that but figured
they only looked shorter because of perspective.
In Bernini's statue
of Constantine, he is awed and his horse rears, as Constantine realizes that he
will win only with the power of the Christ. The moral of this story would not
have been lost upon royal visitors to the pope, or for that matter, Cardinals
accompanying a deceased pontiff's cortege, who are meant to see the leader of
the church as the embodiment of the divine power that over-rules the kings of
the world. This theme is often repeated in Vatican artworks such as Giulio
Romano’s fresco of The Battle of Milvian Bridge, located in the Sala di
Costantino "Hall of Constantine “as well as the marble relief in St.
Peter's.
Bernini’s decoration of the stairway didn’t end here. He sculpted an
equestrian statue of Constantine for a landing just where the columns start.
A History of
Western Architecture, 4th edition by David Watkin.
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