Staying at a holiday home near Via Veneto you can taste a bit of the contradictory essence and yet so harmonious soul of Rome. Via Veneto is the perfect example of the dichotomy that runs through the life and history of the Eternal City.
Known by most as the street where the film "La Dolce Vita" by Federico Fellini was shot but also as the undisputed symbol of glitzy nightlife, luxury shops and prestigious restaurants. Via Veneto was also the scene of strange stories such as those concerning the church of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, which Romans also call "Capuchin Church" because of the underground cemetery decorated entirely with the bones of the Capuchin friars who are buried there.
In addition to the macabre cemetery the church (like most of the churches of Rome) is full of priceless works of art created by the greatest masters of art history, including Guido Reni, painter who lived between the sixteenth and the seventeenth century. In 1635 he painted "St. Michael the Archangel",on which is depicted the act of crushing the head of Satan. Here the painter celebrated the contrast between the ideal and aesthetic unearthly beauty with the human ugliness of the devil.
On portraying the holy, Reni said that he wanted to have "an angelic brush or paradisiac forms to shape the Archangel and see him in Heaven, but I could not climb so high and I looked for him on earth. So I looked in that form the idea that I had established. "
"On Earth", between human beings, he tried to find the model that represents on the painting the pure and good crushing the evil. The oddity is that the face of evil is that of Pope Innocent X which Guido Reni wanted to represent in this way because he had been slandered by him.
