Podcast - Rocky Ruggiero

REBUILDING THE RENAISSANCE PODCAST

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Rebuilding The Renaissance podcast will explore the development of the art, architecture, culture and history in Italy, from ancient Roman times through the Renaissance. Listeners will develop an understanding of Italy’s role in the development of Western civilization and an ability to appreciate and understand works of art in their historical context.

"No one brings the Renaissance to life better than Rocky"

- Valoreev

"No one brings the Renaissance to life better than Rocky"

- Treskovich

"No one brings the Renaissance to life better than Rocky"

- Historywrocky

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Episodes

Episode 266 – Caravaggio’s “Death of the Virgin”

Posted: February 21st, 2024

Commissioned in 1601 for a chapel in the Roman church of Santa Maria della Scala, Caravaggio’s “Death of the Virgin” was rejected by the Carmelite friars of the church. While some believe it was because of the stark and indecorous representation of the dead Virgin Mary, one of Caravaggio’s b...

Episode 265 – Caravaggio’s “Madonna of Loreto”

Posted: February 14th, 2024

Located in the Augustinian church of Sant ’Agostino in Rome, Italy, the “Madonna of Loreto” is one of Caravaggio’s most beautiful paintings. It was painted for the Cavalletti family in 1604 and depicts a barefoot Virgin Mary (who was modeled from a well-known prostitute) standing in a rundow...

Episode 264 – Caravaggio’s “Amor Vincit Omnia” (“Love Conquers All”)

Posted: February 7th, 2024

In the summer of 1602, Caravaggio painted what one art historian described as “the most nakedly libidinous of the painter’s secular mythological works.” Employing the same model that he previously used for his “St. John the Baptist,” Caravaggio creates a disturbingly realistic sexual metap...

Podcast 263 – Caravaggio’s “Incredulity of St. Thomas”

Posted: January 31st, 2024

It was for one of his most important patrons, the fabulously wealthy banker, Vincenzo Giustiniani, that Caravaggio painted one of his most moving works – the “Incredulity of St. Thomas.” The skeptical apostle Thomas probes Christ’s wound with his finger in a disturbingly graphic way that onl...

Episode 262 – Answers to Open Questions XIX

Posted: January 24th, 2024

From the source of the canvases used for large Venetian paintings in the Renaissance, to the death and burial of Masaccio, to the tradition of Madonarri in the Renaissance, to the difference between chiaroscuro and tenebrism, and much, much more - this episode answers the very questions that you a...

Episode 261 – Caravaggio’s “St. John the Baptist” and the “Taking of Christ”

Posted: January 17th, 2024

After the “Supper at Emmaus,” Caravaggio produced two more paintings for the Mattei brothers. The first was the unorthodox “St. John the Baptist” that today is in the Capitoline Museums in Rome and is a rather unabashed representation of a naked youth embracing a ram and lacking any conventi...

Episode 260 – Caravaggio’s “Supper at Emmaus”

Posted: January 10th, 2024

Located in the National Gallery in London, Caravaggio’s “Supper at Emmaus” was painted in 1601 for the influential Cardinal Girolamo Mattei. The painting depicts the episode from the Gospel of Luke where two apostles dine with a traveler and realize to their astonishment that their companion i...

Episode 259 – Caravaggio’s “Conversion of St. Paul”

Posted: January 3rd, 2024

The second painting that Caravaggio produced for the Cerasi Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, Italy, depicts the dramatic conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. While certainly inspired by Raphael’s and Michelangelo’s earlier interpretations of the same subject, Ca...

Episode 258 – Caravaggio’s “Crucifixion of St. Peter”

Posted: December 27th, 2023

Caravaggio’s interpretation of St. Peter’s particular martyrdom – crucifixion in an upside-down position – for the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, Italy, is a moving example of realism and physicality. Three executioners struggle to lift the burly fisherman who seems to embr...