"6. She is beheaded. In the background three angels lay her in a sarcophagus on the summit of Mount Sinai."—See Jameson's Sacred Art, p. 491.
"'Masaccio,' says Vasari, 'whose enthusiasm for art would not allow him to rest contentedly at Florence, resolved to go to Rome, that he might learn there to surpass every other painter.' It was during this journey, which, in fact, added much to his renown, that he painted, in the Church of San Clemente—the chapel which now so usually disappoints the expectations of the traveller, on account of the successive restorations by which his work has been disfigured.... The heavy brush which has passed over each compartment has spared neither the delicacy of the outline, the roundness of the forms, nor the play of light and shade: in a word, nothing which constitutes the peculiar merit of Masaccio."—Rio, Poetry of Christian Art.
At the end of the right aisle is the beautiful tomb of Cardinal Rovarella, ob. 1476. A statue of St. John the Baptist is by Simone, brother of Donatello. Beneath the altar repose the relics of St. Clement, St. Ignatius of Antioch—martyred in the Coliseum, St. Cyril, and St. Servulus.
"'The Fathers are in dust, yet live to God:'
So says the Truth; as if the motionless clay
Still held the seeds of life beneath the sod,
Smouldering and struggling till the judgment-day.
"And hence we learn with reverence to esteem
Of these frail houses, though the grave confines:
Sophist may urge his cunning tests, and deem
That they are earth;—but they are heavenly shrines."
J. H. Newman, 1833.
"St. Grégoire raconte que de son temps on voyait dans le vestibule de l'église Saint Clément un pauvre paralytique, priant et mendiant, sans que jamais une plainte sortît de sa bouche, malgré les vives douleurs qu'il endurait. Chaque fidèle lui donnait, et le paralytique distribuait à son tour, aux malheureux ce qu'il avait reçu de la compassion publique. Lorsqu'il mourut, son corps fut placé près de celui de Saint Clément, pape, et de Saint Ignace d'Antioche, et son nom fut inscrit au martyrologe. On le vénère dans l'Eglise sous le nom de Saint Servulus."—Une Chrétienne à Rome.
The mosaics in the tribune are well worth examination.
"There are few Christian mosaics in which mystic meaning and poetic imagination are more felicitous than in those on the apse of S. Clemente, where the crucifix, and a wide-spreading vine-tree (allusive to His words, who said 'I am the True Vine'), spring from the same stem; twelve doves, emblems of the apostles, being on the cross with the Divine Sufferer; the Mother and St. John beside it, the usual hand stretched out in glory above, with a crown; the four doctors of the Church, also other small figures, men and birds, introduced amidst the mazy vine-foliage; and at the basement, the four mystic rivers, with stags and peacocks drinking at their streams. The figure of St. Dominic is a modern addition. It seems evident, from characteristics of style, that the other mosaics here, above the apsidal arch, and at the spandrils, are more ancient, perhaps by about a century; these latter representing the Saviour in benediction, the four Evangelic emblems, St. Peter and St. Clement, St. Paul and St. Laurence seated; the two apostles designated by their names, with the Greek 'hagios' in Latin letters. The later art-work was ordered (see the Latin inscription below) in 1299, by a cardinal titular of S. Clemente, nephew to Boniface VIII.; the same who also bestowed the beautiful gothic tabernacle for the holy oils, with a relief representing the donor presented by St. Dominic to the Virgin and Child—set against the wall near the tribune, an admirable, though but an accessorial, object of mediæval art."—Hemans' Mediæval Art.
From the sacristy a staircase leads to the Lower Church (occasionally illuminated for the public) first discovered in 1857. Here, there are several pillars of the rarest marbles in perfect preservation, and a very curious series of frescoes of the eighth and ninth centuries, parts of which are still clear and almost uninjured. These include—the Crucifixion, with the Virgin and St. John standing by the cross,—the earliest example in Rome of this well-known subject; the Ascension, sometimes called by Romanists (in preparation for their dogma of 1870), "the Assumption of the Virgin," because the figure of the Virgin is elevated above the other apostles, though she is evidently intent on watching the retreating figure of her divine Son—in this fresco the figure of a pope is introduced (with the square nimbus, showing that it was painted in his lifetime), and the inscription "Sanctissimus dominus, Leo Papa Romanus," probably Leo III. or Leo IV.; the Maries at the sepulchre; the descent into Hades; the Marriage of Cana; the Funeral of St. Cyril with Pope Nicholas I. (858—67) walking in the procession; and, the most interesting of all—probably of somewhat later date, the story of S. Clemente, and that of S. Alexis, whose adventures are described in the account of his church on the Aventine. An altar of Mithras was discovered during the excavations here. Beneath this crypt is still a third structure, discovered 1867,—probably the very house of St. Clement,—(decorated with rich stucco ornament)—sometimes supposed to be the 'cavern near S. Clemente' to which the Emperor Otho III., who died at the age of twenty-two, retired in A.D. 999 with his confessor, and where he spent fourteen days in penitential retirement.
According to the Acts of the Martyrs, the Prefect Mamertinus ordered the arrest of Pope Clement, and intended to put him to death, but was deterred by a tumult of the people, who cried with one voice, "What evil has he done, or rather what good has he not done?" Clement was then condemned to exile in the Chersonese, and Mamertinus, touched by his submission and courage, dismissed him with the words—"May the God you worship bring you relief in the place of your banishment."