Santa Cecilia in Trastevere: Its History, Architecture, and Art from the Paleo-Christian to the Late Medieval Period

Michael Schmitz

The aim of the project is the publication of an Italian-language monograph on the very interesting and significant church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. The period of investigation ranges from the early Christian beginnings to the late Middle Ages, but also includes the ancient prehistory and the post-medieval period, which changed the appearance of the church considerably. The project represents a research-relevant desideratum, especially if one considers the ecclesiastical, architectural, and artistic significance of the building, its history, and its special topographical location in relation to the former Roman harbor. In recent years, the collection of sources and the analysis of previously unpublished documents as well as numerous inscriptions from the 5th to the 15th century have led to new, revealing insights. These concern, for example, the changing presence of various local religious communities over the course of the centuries, the clarification of problems of patronage, or the refinement of dating issues. New results were also obtained in the analysis of the complex building history and in the examination of the surviving liturgical and artistic furnishings and the reconstruction of the lost or fragmented liturgical and artistic furnishings. Examples of these are the Carolingian apse mosaic, the mural program of the Cavallini workshop, and the main altar ciborium of Arnolfo di Cambio, all of which are of outstanding art-historical significance both in their historical context and far beyond.