A recent stroll through the Eterna took us to the lovely Galleria Sciarra, near the Trevi Fountain, a lovely building constructed just after the unification of Italy in the late 1880s that originally served as a shopping center. The architecture, frescoes, and glass dome of the Galleria Sciarra have just been restored and are looking drop-dead lovely, so we thought we’d share some photos and tell you a bit about this little gem.
Commissioned by Prince Maffeo Sciarra, the building was designed architect Giulio De Angelis and its interior was painted by Giuseppe Cellini, who covered the walls with the Sciarra family crest, portraits of 12 “modern” women sporting fancy hairstyles and beautiful dresses who serve as personifications of female virtues, scenes from the lives of ideal women, and Latin inscriptions alluding to the virtues to which women of the era were meant to aspire.
The 12 women personifying modern virtues are shown in the uppermost figural register (see photos above and below). They are explained by Elizabeth Jones in an article published on WantedinRome.com:
A Latin word identifies…(desired) virtues while an attitude, a gesture, an attribute helps to characterise them. Benigna spreads her skirt generously wide; Domina, mistress of the household, points a furled fan downwards with a commanding gesture; Amabilis gracefully extends her arms in welcome; Fidelis points her left forefinger to her faithful heart, an emblematic dog at her feet; Misericors is cutting her tresses and so, in compassion, is making a sacrifice of her crowning glory; Lusta brings her hands judiciously together; Pudica looks modest and Sobria has a high-buttoned neckline; Patiens gazes down resignedly at the two naked babies sprawled on her lap; Fortis, arms akimbo, bears up valiantly; Humilis in an apron holds out her arms in submissive surrender; Prudens fortifies herself against temptation by reading a book.
Below the 12 ideal women, in a second register surrounding the windows, are images that following the life of an ideal woman in the late 19th century. The cycle begins with a young woman receives the attentions of a dashing dark-haired man (said to be a portrait of Gabriele D’Annunzio), continues through her marriage, the birth of a child, her blissful motherhood, her happy domestic life which includes a wonderful dinner scene, her fulfilling relationship with her husband, and her generosity to the poor.
On pilasters below these scenes–painted at the ground level of the Galleria–are inscriptions from Roman poets. Again, we turn to Elizabeth Jones for insight as to their meanings:
Below these scenes are four Latin quotations. A woman…educated in the classics would have recognised them. They are from Horace and Virgil, the two best-known poets of Augustan Rome…each quotation has a specific bearing on a scene above. Beneath the lavish wedding scene we have Horace, in unusually austere, proto-Rousseau mode, praising the noble savage Scythian woman:
The generous dowry she receives from her parents is virtue: she remains true to her vows and shuns men not her husband; adultery is a foul offence, its penalty death. (Odes III. 24. 21-24)
Under the mother and baby is Virgils encouragement to the child who is to bring back the Golden Age:
Begin, little boy, to recognise your mother with a smile. (Eclogue 4. 60)
A stanza from Horace underpins the scene at the dinner table:
A man lives well on little if the family salt cellar gleams, carefully polished, on his frugal table, and if fear and sordid avarice do not disturb his easy slumbers. (Odes 2. 16. 13-16)
Virgil is invoked to comment on the almsgiving scene:
Not ignorant of suffering, I am learning to succour the wretched. (Aeneid 1. 630)
The Galleria Sciarra is between Via M. Minghetti and Piazza dellOratorio. Stop in to see the newly restored building the next time you’re in the area. There’s no shopping there now, but there’s evidence of some sort of commercial activity, so we’re hoping to see it returned to its former livliness in the future.
Photos by Susan Sanders. See her blog Rome With a View for more images of the Eternally Beautiful city.
