BERNINI S SCALA KEGIA
Coming from the colonnades, one reaches it along a corridor. The
corridor ends in about fifteen or twenty steps, and then there is a
slight break just at the point where one enters at right angles from
the galilee porch of St. Peter's. So here two main directions meet.
They had to be joined and connected up. It was a master-stroke of
Bernini to pkce opposite the entrance from the church an equestrian
monument to the Emperor Constantine. Coming up from the
corridor it appears on the right and forces us to halt, before we
enter the Royal Staircase itself. The sudden appearance of the white
prancing horse against a storm-swept drapery lit by windows
above serves to conceal the otherwise unpleasant change of direction.
The Scala Regia had to be fitted into an awkwardly shaped area
between church and palace. It is long, comparatively narrow and has
irregularly converging walls. Bernini turned all this to advantage
by means of an ingenious tunnel-vaulted colonnade of diminishing
size. The principle is that of vistas on the Baroque stage. Streets there
were made to appear long by the use of exaggerated perspective.
In the same way Borromini treated the niches at S. Carlo (pi. LXIV)
and the windows on the top floor of the Palazzo Barberini. Such
scenic illusions were not entirely new. They are to be found in
Bramante's early works in Milan..Michelangelo too in his design
for the Capitol in Rome had placed the palaces on the sides at such
an angle as to increase the apparent height of the Senate House. Light
is another means for dramatising the ascent up the Royal Staircase.
On the first landing halfway up it falls in from the left, on the second
in the far distance a window faces the staircase and dissolves the
contours of the room. Finally there is the decoration, the splendid
angels, e.g. with their trumpets holding up the Pope's arms, to
complete this gorgeous overture to the Vatican Palace.
Angels, genii and such-like figures, preferably in realistic colour-
ing, are an essential part of Baroque settings. Not only do they serve
to cover up structural joints and to hide the contraptions "behind
the scenes" which make these illusions work, but they also act as
intermediaries between the real space in which we move and the
space created by the artist. The Baroque does not want to keep the
border line visible between audience and stage. Such terms from the
world of the theatre—or should one rather say: the world of the
opera, which was an Italian invention of the iyth century—come
into one's mind with good reason. However, there is more than a
mere theatrical trick in this flow from reality into illusion and from
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