Late Renaissance Rome and Jesuit Culture Policy-Week 3


Alexandria Johnson

            This week we dived deeper into the renaissance and the Jesuits. We started the day off by going to the Gesu where we learned about the Patron of the arts at the time it was built, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Who was the grandson of Pope Paul III and had a lot of powerful position which helped him gain the money and influence to help make the church a possibility. The reason why he was invested into the Jesuits is because they were established by his grandfather during his time as pope. The location of the Gesu is also important it was built in the middle of the city in front of two main cross roads so that they can attract large crowds. Because at the time that they were just starting out preaching was a big way to gain influence in the church so they need a lot of people to preach to. The design of the church was originally going to be very simple because that’s how the Jesuits wanted it to be but the patron has a large influence on the way the church was styled so it turned out to be more extravagant in the end. While were still outside of the Jesuit we learned about the term Volutes which are the spirals that link the lateral and central portions of the façade, which are located at the two corners which is important at the time because before that they just had a triangle and a square and nothing to tie it all together. Once we entered the church we talked about the interior design which is also very important because the Jesuits did not have want the two side aisles and the central naïve they only have the enteral nave because they wanted the church to be focus on one mass not to have several things going on that would distract from that. Then we had a presentation on the definition of a nave which is the central part of the church that connects to the apes at the very end. We continued by taking about the three phase of the church which makes it so different from the other late renaissance churches; the phases are the 16th century, the baroque, and the 19th century decoration. During the 16th century which is the late renaissance decoration of the church focused on having a more unified program, which included the designs of the church being about the spiritual exercises and other important moment in Christianity. Until the Jesuits got their own saints canonized which change the theme for a lot of sections of the church. After we discussed this we moved on and were able to see the painting over Ignatius tomb lowered and the statue reviled which was amazing! Then we went upstairs to get a closer look of the celling painting done by Gauli.

            The next stop after the Gesu was Santo Stefano Rotondo which was a beautiful rounded church dedicated to the martyrs and their deaths. The painting that surround the walls of the church was painted by Nicolò Circignani who was a controversial artist because his painting were so graphic and violent. Some peopled loved his work because it gave an accurate portal of martyrdom which is very important to the rise of Christianity and some people saw the paintings to graphic and unnecessary. But it was important to the late renaissance to help bring Christianity together after the protestant reformation.

            Then we made a stop at San Luigi dei Francesi which is a church that in one of its chapels holds multiple Caravaggio paintings. There we had a presentation on this controversial artist. He is considered by most to be one of the greatest artist but at his time a lot of people did not approve of the way he created his art, at the time of the renaissance art was become a more technical thought work so when Caravaggio painted his works by just painting on the surface without any chalk outlines many people consider it to be a disrespect to art. He also had many alter pieces that were redone or taken down because the images would not fit with the mass some of them had the feet positioned right were the priest would lift the Eucharist and on others people just did not like what in the a paintings seemed to display. He also had a very scandalous lifestyle he killed a man in Rome and was a runaway criminal.

             Our very last stop that day was the Galleria Borghese which had many works by Bernini who was very important to the renaissance. Bernini was an artist who was most famously known by his amazing sculptors. In this gallery we saw his works of Apollo and Dauphine and his statue of David. The story of Apollo and Dauphine is the Apollo get shot that the arrow of love and dauphine gets shot with the arrow of hate by cupid to curse them so Apollo is chasing Dauphine because he loves her so much but when he catches up to her she turns into a tree. The sculptor portrays this scene in detail by showing branches growing out of Dauphine’s nails and other details.

            This past week we learned a lot about the time of the Jesuits which is the late renaissance. We learned about the way of the Jesuits wanting to have simple art to them wanting to have elaborate things to show the greatness of the leaders of their society and we learned about famous artist that help make the idealized style of the late renaissance.





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