Final - Alaina Fontenot

Rome is home to some of the world’s oldest and most influential works of art. This past month, in Art/Jesuits in Early Modern Rome, we covered an impressive amount of ground looking at work spanning from the 15th all the way to the 17th centuries. What’s maybe the most impressive, though, is the range of ceiling paintings that spanned these centuries. From the Allegory of Divine Providence by Pietro da Cartona in the Palazzo Barberini, to the Apotheosis of Saint Ignazio by Andrea Pozzo in the Chiesa di Stant’ Ignazio, to the Triumph of the Name of Jesus by Giovanni Battista Gaulli in the Gesù, each painting seemed more grandiose and mind-boggling than the next. 

Each painting mentioned above is its own example of quadratura painting in the Baroque era. The Baroque movement in art came after the Renaissance and later Mannerism painting where there was an emphasis on going back to the Classical art and architecture of the Hellenistic period and Classical Rome. The art was very clean and pretty, the figures idealized and statuesque, and the architecture precise with the pureness of geometric forms. Mannerism starts to break out of this practiced equation and debuts a more playful and dynamic human figure to show how well the artists can depict the body. Baroque art, however, breaks away from this completely and aims to basically put on a show for all of it’s viewers. Baroque art is dynamic, intense, emotional, energetic, and appeals more to the senses rather than the intellect. Quadratura, a form of painting that was used in its prime during this era, set out to do just these things. 

Quadratura was fairly common in ancient Rome, more common during the Renaissance, but was the most common during the Baroque because the technique requires exceptional skills in linear, visual and spatial perspective. This type of painting is an illusionistic mural—painted as a fresco on Italian church ceilings for our purposes—that seems to extend past the architecture on which it was painted. In the case of the three above mentioned ceiling paintings, the scenes and subjects not only appear to extend upward past the confines of the ceilings, but outward to seem as though they are being projected onto the viewer. 

The Allegory of Divine Providence is unlike the other two ceiling frescoes in that it is not a religious painting, but an allegorical representation of the Barberini Pope’s life and family. The massive fresco, painted between 1632 and 1639 in the Gran Salon of the Barberini Palace, depicts the power and prestige of the Barberini family through over one hundred characters who are arranged at varying depths. Near the middle of the central rectangle, a swarm of three bees can be seen encircled in a wreath, signifying the family’s coat of arms. Within this central rectangle is a personification of Divine Providence seated on clouds, she is commanding Rome to crown the Barberini arms. Also featured here are personifications of vices and virtues such as Fortitude, Justice, Prudence and Temperance. 

The art and architecture of Chiesa di Sant’ Ignazio was intended to blur the lines between reality and heavenly, and in the case of the Apotheosis of Sant’ Ignazio, this goal was definitely reached. When standing at the intended space at the center of the nave, looking up at the remarkable scene of Saint Ignatius being welcomed into heaven, it is almost impossible to decipher where the architecture of the building ends and Pozzo’s painting begins. He seamlessly blends one into the other. Although we are rationally aware that Pozzo’s figures are not circling the ceiling, the expert way that he depicts the characters from beneath make us think that we are looking up into the heavens; even the clouds seem to be in motion. Pozzo even brought into the equation the political turmoil that was surrounding the Catholic Church at the time of the Counter-Reformation. At each corner of the fresco are the four great continents of the Earth: Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Africa. This was used to illustrate the notion of the expansion of the Catholic faith at a time where there was great resistance against it by the Protestants. 

The Gesù, a Jesuit church dedicated to Jesus after the death of its founder Ignatius of Loyola, is home to another religious quadratura the Triumph of the Name of Jesus. Here, the entire church is colorful and full of energy without being complicated. Everything fits together nicely. When looking up to the ceiling painting we see the name of Jesus—the IHS that can be seen when walking up the steps to enter the church—which pulls together the theme of the church. In the Gesù, not only does the ceiling appear to extend upwards into and through the ceiling, but pieces of the fresco that are painted on stucco clearly extend from the frame and clearly bleed over onto pieces of actual architecture. The whole space is cohesive, from painting to sculpture to stained class and even to the use of color; and this all lends to the idea that the Baroque style painting of quadratura was intended to be a whole spectacle. As if when we watch a movie and our world is no longer our own—we enter into the world the director has created for us—Gaulli has created a world in which we are transcending into heaven as we see the sinners being cast into hell, reminding us of the importance of the Catholic faith.