The Hospital Where Pope Francis Is Being Treated: Policlinico Gemelli in Rome

Main hospital buildings, with statue of Pope John Paul II (and smokers).

We wish Pope Francis well. The news media are full of reports of his hospitalization at Rome's Gemelli Hospital (Policlinico Gemelli). It's in a location few non-Romans know. We thought some of those non-Romans might appreciate photos of more of the sprawling complex where the Pope is being treated. We went out there (and it is to most people "out there") one day looking for wall art. In the process, we explored the hospital and learned something about it. Most of our photos of the hospital complex are at the end of a December 2019 post that we have reprinted here mostly as it was published then.

We learned (after our 2019 visit) the Gemelli complex has 5,000 employees and hosts about 30,000 people on any given day. Hence, my reference below to a "small city" - perhaps not so small.

Getting to Gemelli and finding the works was another issue. The complex is so enormous that we had problems even finding our way in - it's not made for pedestrian access.  Once in, most people - and we asked a lot of them, including at the front desk and in the library - had never heard of the work of the street artist we hoped to find there, even though he had recently completed the Leonardo shown below.  And, the Caravaggio (also explained below) is in a building quite a distance from the main ones, on a hill. At one point, due to my poor translation, I thought we were looking for 7 works by Ravo (mistaking the "Seven works of mercy" - also a failure of my training in art history- sorry, Mrs. Reinhart from Stanford-in-Italy).

Bill hauled us out to Trionfale and the hospital complex (no mean feat - these are not roads meant for anything but high-speed autos) on a day when no rain was predicted.  So, of course, it rained (recall, we are on a scooter).  Ultimately, the adventure was successful.  We saw two magnificent pieces of wall art, a glimpse into the life of hospitals in Rome (not that I haven't had others - very close up and personal), and the rather unfortunate story that most people don't even know these paintings exist.

To some, the painting above may be familiar.  It's Caravaggio's 1607 "Seven Works of Mercy," the original now in Naples, here replicated on the immense exterior wall of one of the many buildings of the Policlinico Gemelli (Gemelli hospital - more like a small city) in Rome's northern Trionfale quarter.

The artist signs himself Ravo; full name Andrea Mattoni, a Swiss-Italian whose hallmark is replicating the Old Masters or, as Ravo states it, "the recovery of classicism in the contemporary."  The Caravaggio above, completed in December 2017, was the most complex wall painting Ravo had done to date. In an interview, he stated (not my translation): 

Closeup of Ravo's painting; "Visit the
imprisoned and feed the hungry."

“It’s like if I was a conductor who present a symphony drawing from an immense repertoire and my theater is the territory itself. I become a transmission channel that follows the ancient tradition of the copy of the work, a practice that was once widespread for the diffusion of paintings. I try to present them to a larger and unexpected audience, carrying forward also my background: graffiti. In fact, the spray is the common thread that connects with my past, where I come from, and it is precisely for this reason that I chose the spray can as my running stick.”  

(You can see the work in process in late 2017 here.)

He is, of course, speaking our language when he inserts the unexpected - in this case the classical - into an unattractive contemporary landscape - the suburban hospital complex.

Ravo completed a second work at Gemelli this past Spring. We saw it shortly after it was completed.  "Madonna Litta," a late 15th-century painting in the Hermitage, is attributed to Leonardo. Ravo painted it in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death.  It sits above a busy road within the hospital complex:

For photos of the Leonardo work in process, see here (article in Italian).

Ravo also has a Facebook page. One of his posts (they are in English) started with this quote: "All art is contemporary, or it was at some point."

One can debate whether replicating great art is itself art. It has been historically. And we like what Ravo is doing to our often isolated and forbidding urban landscapes

Below, more of our hospital pix.  

Dianne

The entrance to the complex is rather unassuming,
though somewhat intimidating for pedestrians.

The hospital seems to have its own highway system.

And its own bridges...Calatrava step aside!

Hard to capture the effect with this small photo, but this
 could have been the largest - and busiest -  hospital cafeteria
we've ever seen. We didn't even try to get a coffee.

No post is complete without a scooterpark pic.
(The sign says "motorcycle exit.") Ravo's Leonardo
painting is up on the right.

 

The Roman Temple Nobody Knows: Temple of Minerva Medica

 

Paolo Anesi, 18th century

The Temple of Minerva Medica, as it's called, is one of the most easily accessible ancient structures in all of Rome. It's right there on via Giolitti, the busy street that runs along the south side of Stazione Termini and the tracks beyond. Not far from Piazza Maggiore, and just a stone's throw from Santa Bibiana, the also-neglected baroque church whose facade was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. 

A Yale University website describes the temple as "forlorn," and that description isn't inaccurate, in that the building is uncomfortably sandwiched between a streetcar line (and via Giolitti) on one side and a swarm of railroad tracks on the other. 

But it's also quite imposing, and reasonably well preserved for a 4th-century CE edifice. And it may be architecturally significant, in that (we read) its decagonal design, which included an oculus, occupies the architectural space between the octagonal dining room of the Domus Aurea--and the Pantheon. The Temple's dome collapsed in 1828, lasting only about 1400 years. The photo below makes it look like the oculus is still there--but it's only one of the arches. 

One might call it the Other Pantheon. 

So you'll want to see it, even if only through the fence by which it is surrounded. (Right, Dianne, wishing she could just walk in.)

The problem is that you won't be looking at the Temple of Minerva Medica. It's called that, yes, but only because, in the 18th century, a statue known as Athena Giustiniani (below) was presumably found there. That statue of the goddess had, and has, a snake at her feet. And because snakes were identified at the time with healing, the "Medica" name was affixed to the Temple. (Minerva is the Etruscan counterpart of the Greek Athena.) About the time the Temple was erroneously named, the artist Paolo Anesi painted the picture of it at the top of this post.

The misunderstanding all started with this statue. 

On Wikipedia and the like, the Temple of Minerva Medica is often described as a nymphaeum, or a "ruined nymphaeum" (as if there were lots of pristine ones around). Because the Temple is not mentioned (at all, apparently), in the ancient literature, no one knows for sure that the building was, in fact, a nymphaeum. That's only one theory among three. It may have housed a dining room, say some, although that seems a curiously minimal use for so large a structure. Others note that a heating system has been discovered beneath the floor, and that a sacred spring once ran under it, allowing the building to serve as a bathing facility for the elites of the day--though that use, too, is far from certain. 

In the right light and from the right angle, the Temple can look quite dramatic. 

Centrale Montemartini, the Ostiense museum that is #22 on RST's Top 40, houses two statues of Roman magistrates that were excavated from the Temple. 

Above: a recent partial restoration used a lot of new brick. 

Below: a newish storyboard, left, in English as well as Italian, provides some history of the Temple. Get there--if you can!--before the taggers render it illegible.

Bill