Review: Die Kirchen der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter 1050–1300, vol. 2, S. Giovanni in Laterano, by Peter Cornelius Claussen

Abstract

Peter Cornelius Claussen ; Die Kirchen der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter 1050––1300, vol. 2, S. Giovanni in Laterano ; Corpus Cosmatorum II, 2; Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte und christlichen Archaaologie 21, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008, 431 pp., 255 b/w illus. €€ 105 (cloth), ISBN 9783515090735 This is obviously an important work in progress. Imposing German enterprises such as this one and Die Kirchen von Siena, emanating from the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence,1 tend to encounter large immovable objects such as the cathedral of Siena, which slow the majestic progress of publication. Here it is the cathedral of Rome, San Giovanni in Laterano, which occupies almost the whole volume, with the exception of a densely argued section by Darko Senekovic on San Giovanni in Fonte, the Lateran Baptistery (355––93). The present volume begins not with the Lateran itself but with a section adding to and commenting on the first volume of the corpus, published in 2002, which covered Sant'Adriano to Santa Francesca Romana, and providing additional information on the signatures of Cosmati masons as a supplement to Claussen's Magistri Doctissimi Romani of 1987.2 This information could surely have been more appropriately located at the back of the present volume, for it confers a provisional and at times defensive tone to the beginning of what, it must immediately be said, is an impressive achievement. This is a substantial book on an important episode in the architectural and decorative history of one of Christendom's greatest monuments, Constantine's Basilica Salvatoris . It is arguable whether the medieval period is by any means the defining episode in its architectural history, and it is immediately striking how much of the surviving graphic evidence stems from the preparations for Borromini's thorough-going remodeling of 1646––50. From another viewpoint it is a book that continues a long bibliographical sequence. After the pioneering monograph of Philippe Lauer, understanding of the basilica was fundamentally revised in the fifth volume of Richard Krautheimer's Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae .3 Krautheimer's magisterial analysis was very largely confined to the architectural framework, and church furnishing and liturgical …