Michael McCahill

Mondays, February 8 - March 22 (not February 15)     10:00 a.m - 12:00 noon
6 sessions.  King's Chapel Parish House, 64 Beacon Street

In 1420 the papacy returned to a city in ruins. Over the next two and a half centuries, a series of popes set out to rebuild and ornament Rome, first as a means of reasserting their authority within the Roman Catholic Church and among Europe’s Catholic monarchs, then to counteract the Protestant Reformation and provide a visual symbol for reformed Catholicism, and finally to create a cultural center that would attract and perhaps convert Europe’s noble elite. As these pontiffs and their courts worked to achieve their goals, they had the good sense and the good taste to enlist artists, including Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, della Porta, Maderno, Bernini and Borromini – almost invariably with good results.

There will be handouts at each meeting. Recommended reading includes Loren Partridge The Art of Renaissance Rome (2003) and Richard Krautheimer The Rome of Alexander VII, 1655-1667 (1985).

Michael McCahill received his doctorate in modern European history at Harvard and has written extensively on 18th- and early 19th-century Britain. He finished his career at Brooks School directing the Robert Lehman Art Center and teaching art history, including a course for seniors, entitled “Rome in the Age of the Renaissance and the Baroque”.