Santi Luca e Martina is a 17th century confraternity church located by the Roman Forum at Via della Curia 2 in the rione Monti. It is a familiar landmark on the Via dei Fori Imperiali. Pictures of the church at Wikimedia Commons are here. There is an English Wikipedia page here.
The unique dedication is jointly to St Luke the Evangelist and to St Martina, a 3rd century Roman virgin martyr (allegedly).
History
Ancient times
The location here used to be the Comitium, the political centre of the ancient city from the earliest times and functioning as such since at least the 7th century BC. It started as an open-air meeting-place, and might well have been the original neutral location for debate between the Bronze age villages on the surrounding hills in the second millennium BC. This was when Rome was nothing more than a scatter of such villages and a trading area besides the lowest fording point on the Tiber, where the Bocca della Verità now is.
The actual site of the church was occupied by the Curia Hostilia, the first senate house of the city which is thought to have originally been a large hut which combined the functions of a temple (the sacredness of which would have enforced non-violent behaviour) and a debating-hall for the village delegates. This evolved into a dedicated aula for the archaic city's alpha males, and as such survived until 57 BC when a badly-managed funeral pyre burned it out.
This was then replaced by the so-called Curia Cornelia, a much bigger building. It lasted barely a decade before Julius Caesar demolished it, and built the Curia Iulia or Senate House next door. Part of the site was then occupied by his Forum Iulium, the line of the temenos wall of which passes under the church. The remaining part of the site next to the Comitium was occupied by the new Temple of Felicitas, which did not survive the first century AD.
After that, the site was occupied by nothing more than a row of shops or tabernae attached to the Forum Iulium until the Curia was rebuilt by the emperor Diocletian. The Secretarium Senatus, which was primarily a private court for the investigation of the activities of senators, then occupied one of these premises.
An inscription records that the Secretarium was rebuilt by Nicomachus Flavianus the Younger at the start of the 5th century, and restored by Annius Eucharius Epiphanius in the year 414. The Senate House was still a fully functioning institution, and was to remain so for another two centuries.
Santa Martina
The original church on the site was dedicated to St Martina, who unfortunately has fallen into some neglect despite once being regarded as an important patron of the city. Her surviving legend first appears in the 8th century, and unfortunately is completely fictional. It derives from the Greek acta of St Tatiana, and the emperor and consul mentioned never existed. However, the old church contained an undated and now lost epigraph reading: "Here lie the bodies of the holy martyrs, the virgin Martina and her companions Concordius and Epiphanius". The revised Roman martyrology merely notes her association with the church, without giving any details about her or her putative martyrdom.
There is evidence of an early oratory dedicated to her at the tenth milestone on the Via Ostiense, and a suggesion is that she was martyred there.
Foundation
The church here dedicated to St Martina was founded in the 7th century, but the actual circumstances are unknown. It is often asserted that the Secretarium was converted into a church in the same project by Pope Honorius I that saw the Senate House converted into the church of Sant'Adriano, but this is a surmise. What is known is that the church used to have a mosaic showing St Martina flanked by Pope Honorius and Pope Donus, and the revised Roman martyrology now states that the church was founded by the latter pope in 677. This is forty-seven years after the consecration of Sant'Adriano.
The first documentary reference is in the Liber Pontificalis for Pope Adrian I (772-95), and in the entry for Pope Leo III is referred to as S. Martinae in tribus fatis. It was later known as "the church in three forums" (tribus foris), allegedly as it stood where the Roman Forum meets those of Augustus and Caesar. However, the original name seems to refer to three female pagan statues.
Middle ages
The original church had a single nave, with an apse. It was not large. However, it and the neighbouring church of Sant'Adriano had some importance in the Middle Ages and there is evidence that the two buildings continued to be used for civic functions until the 12th century. Also, the tradition grew up of starting the papal celebration of the feast of the Presentation of the Lord with the pope blessing the candles at this church, before going in procession to Santa Maria Maggiore.
In 1256 the church was rebuilt and re-dedicated by Pope Alexander IV.
A surviving engraving of 1575 is here. It shows Sant'Adriano to the right, and Santa Martina hiding behind a domestic building to the left. The ridge of the roof and the little bellcote can be seen.
San Luca
The presence of St Luke in the dedication has its remote justification in the existence of a small church called San Luca near Santa Maria Maggiore.
This used to stand on the north corner of the Piazza dell'Esquilino, with its left hand side wall along the Via Urbana. This piazza has had its sides shaved off by building development on the other side of the Via Cavour from the basilica. To locate the site, draw a line on a map which extends the line of the present Via dell'Esquilino north-westwards until it intersects the stub-end of the Via Urbana (blocked by the elevated Via Torino). The church stood on the north-east corner of this point of intersection.
It first appears in the late mediaeval catalogues, and in 1371 was put in the care of the Chapter of Santa Maria Maggiore. It is fairly certain that it was a descendent of a monastery perhaps founded here in the 8th century, but trying to figure out which of the monasteries in the documentation this might have been is pure guesswork.
The church was parochial, with burial rights.
Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84) donated the church to the guild of painters (Compagna dei Pittori), which had been founded in 1577 and was to be here for over a hundred years. Then in 1588 Pope Sixtus V sequestered the building, and had it demolished in order to improve the ambience of the piazza. In compensation, the painters were given the old church of Santa Martina.
Engravings featuring San Luca are here.
Initial works
Part of the deal was that the dedication of the lost church was to be preserved, since it was the only one in the city dedicated to the evangelist. Hence, the old church became Santi Luca e Martina.
The painters were not happy with the deal, but did not have the money initially to do much more than revamp their new property. Lack of funds stymied a rebuilding proposal by Giovanni Battista Montano in 1592 which was rivalled by one from Ottaviano Nonni, Il Mascarino, and also plans by Federico Zuccari in the following year.
The confraternity had brought their burial rights with them, and so began by digging out a crypt and installing a new church floor at a higher level. This helped with a long-term problem of flooding, since the old floor was below ground level. The crypt was to be a place for burials. Then they rebuilt the priest's house with two storeys in front of the façade to provide accommodation for their activities (done by 1595), and finally heightened the walls of the church and put on a new roof without a ceiling. The project was finished in 1618. Giovanni Baglione published another rebuilding proposal in that year.
Meanwhile, the Compagna had become the Accademia di San Luca in 1593.
Rebuilding
The job was not well done, and a surviving visitation description of 1625 indicates that the church was decaying. The roof was leaking, and apparently the interior walls were left unplastered and the windows unframed.
The Senate House (former church of Sant'Adriano) is on the left.
In 1588, Pope gave it to the "Accademia di San Luca", the (Drawing) Academy of St Luke. It was rebuilt 1635-1664 by Pietro da Cortona, the head of the Academy, as a domed cruciform church, close to the Baroque style. They rededicated the church to St Luke, patron of artists and of the Academy, while preserving the old dedication to St Martina as well. The intention of the Academy was originally to restore the old church. But when the relics of St Martina and other martyrs were found (incidentally while da Cortona was constructing his own tomb in the crypt), Pope Urban VIII and his nephew Cardinal Francesco Barberini financed the construction of the new church.
Interior
Over the altar, there is a painting of St Luke at his easel. To the right is an altar dedicated to St Lazarus, an 8th Eastern monk and artist whose right hand was burned by the Iconoclasts.
The crypt is interesting, and may be visited of you ask the sacristan. In the corridor you enter is a bas-relief of the Entombment of Christ by Alessandro Algardi, and a monument to the architect, da Cortona.
The main chapel in the crypt has a magnificent gilt bronze altar by da Cortona above the relics of St Martina, who served as deaconess of a church at the site in the 3rd century. There is also a statue by Niccolò Menghini of St Martina praying before the Madonna sculptured in alabaster and lapis lazuli. The crypt also has a throne in which the early popes sat to distribute candles at the beginning of the Purification procession.
The tomb da Cortona, which was constructed for himself when St Martina's relics were found, stands here, and next to it is a monument to the architect Giovanni Battista Soria and a Pietá in terracotta by Allessandro Algardi.
Note on access
This church is only open from 9:00 to 18:00 on Saturdays (to 20:00, March to September).
External links
"Laboratorioromana" article with photos (recommended)