CLEMENT VIII AND THE SIDE CHAPELS (1602)

Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini (June 30, 1592–March 3, 1605) undertook a radical remodeling of the Basilica of SS. Cosma e Damiano, which had very little in common with Peruzzi's project of the early sixteenth century (see Fig. 296). During this renovation, which began around 1592 and was completed ten years later, seven side chapels were built against the ashlar walls of the great hall – a typical “updating” of church architecture during the Counter-Reformation. This intervention was a manifestation of the interest shown by seventeenthcentury popes in early Christian churches (and, at the same time, of the lack of interest in preserving Roman antiquities), but it was not very successful; indeed, it will last for less than three decades. Before the remodeling, the interior still retained its fourth-century proportions, although the medieval floor was about 1.13 cm higher than the original one and the Romanesque bell tower had occupied the western corner of the great hall. After Clement VIII's intervention, the basilica became inevitably narrower. The rear side of each chapel was still the ashlar wall of the Flavian-Severan phases, including the fourth-century walling of the niches of the Library of Peace; the remodeling required just a series of piers between the chapels, the barrel vaults of the latter, a series of narrow rooms above the chapels with their barrel vaults, and finally two tall, longitudinal walls above the arches of the chapels.

Only three chapels were built on the left-hand side of the basilica because of the presence of the medieval bell tower, which, however, was almost completely demolished between 1596 and 1605 (its two inner sides still survive, at least at ground level: see Chapter 14.4). Nowadays, the only surviving structures made under Clement VIII on this side of the basilica are the two piers between the three chapels and the wall that abuts the mosaics near the apse (see Chapter 12). The (ancient) rear sides of the chapels, together with their altars and vaults, were demolished during Urban VIII's restoration of the basilica.