What’s Up? The Jesuits and Ceiling Painting in Early Modern Rome (Savannah Kelly)

Throughout this trip, the primary style of art that really sticks out is ceiling paintings. Every single day here in nearly every single building we went into, there were ceiling paintings. Granted, some weren’t exactly as expected, as some depicted religious scenes, such as the Assumption of Mary (which ended up being a surprisingly popular iconography that I never would have expected), or even some of the more medieval pieces that we saw in some of the first churches here, with the hand of god coming down, while Jesus hang nailed to the cross with saints and apostles flanking either sides of the painting. On the other side of things, though, there was an enormous amount of pagan and historical ceiling paintings, such as the Casino dell’Aurora, or the Loves of the Gods at the Palazzo Farnese, all the way to the scenes of Alexander the Great extending from the walls onto the ceiling at the Castel Sant’Angelo. With this in mind, it would be too far a jump to say that the Jesuits used the artistic style of ceiling painting to their advantage, too. Many of the churches we saw, Jesuit included, had ceiling paintings, with two especially sticking out to mind: il Gesu, the mother church of the Society of Jesus, and Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio di Loyola with its interesting fake dome.

Firstly comparing the churches themselves gives you two vastly different reasons. The Gesu was created as the mother church for the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, that St. Ignatius of Loyola wanted to be the center of his church due to it being where he prayed to a certain image of the Virgin Mary. Sant’Ignazio was used more as a church for study, the school it belonged to allowing student in for free only for the student body to become much larger than previously expected and this secondary church being built to help alleviate that situation.

As for the ceiling paintings themselves, let’s start with the ceiling of the Gesu. The church was built and everything was fine, until came time to paint the ceiling. Michelangelo was all set to get up there and do the work until the last minute in which everything just fell through. Now, eventually they did get someone, though, granted through a few degrees of separation. G.B. Gauli did the work on the ceiling by request of the architect’s nephew. Granted, some people were not too fond of this decision – Gauli had done a few pieces at the Sant'Agnese in Agone which depicted naked figures which was not the most idealistic artistic form at the time. Michelangelo later returned to the same work and painted clothes on to appease the masses. Because of this, Gauli’s work on the church, namely the nave, was highly overseen by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The paintings were revealed to the public on Christmas Eve 1679 but he continued working on them for a few years later.

The name of the ceiling painting itself is Triumph of the Name of Jesus, depicting a “whirlwind of Jesus’ followers.” The painting in in a spiral shape and is used as an allegory that Jesus’ love swirls around his followers as a whirlwind and sweeps them up those who do not follow him to come down the path of righteousness. Jesus’ name (HIS) is heavily backlit and illuminates the followers, while sinners below them face the Last Judgement and revel in darkness to show their horrendous deeds. The phenomenon of quadrature comes into effect here as well, as the picture shows an image of an open heaven with a false window painted around it, giving off the illusion of something that is not there; in this case the “something” being that the ceiling of the church is not in fact open and it has merely been painted on to give the illusion of a lack of roof. The surrounding angels on the ceiling enforce this image, as some of them appear to be peering out of gripping the edges of the false window, as does the whirlwind itself, covering an edge to give the image of upwards movement.

The ceiling of Sant’Ignazio has an amazing example of quadrature, of an image that tricks the eye into believing the illusion of something that is or is not. This example is the dome that is present close to the middle of the church. There was not enough money in the budget for the building of the church to build a second dome, so they did the next best thing – they painted one. From just the perfect angle, it appears there is a second dome located in the church yet as you get closer, you slowly start to realize it is a painted fake, an illusion of an actual dome in the ceiling above. (I found this rather incredible and somewhat amusing, making bad Star Wars references. “That’s no dome!”)

Granted, the mirror placed in the center of the building isn’t to look at the dome, but instead at the main ceiling fresco. While the Gesu’s main fresco depicted Jesus sweeping people up in his religion, this one depicts St. Ignatius spreading the word of Jesus across the four continents and his ascension into paradise for doing so. In a sense, this fresco depicts his apotheosis, which was originally a pagan term to describe an emperor ascending into godhood, but the Christians took it as a term to describe a person ascending into heaven. However, interestingly enough, instead of the Evangelicals of the Bible, are four of God’s warriors, two of which being Judith and David; this was due to the Catholic Counter-Reformation encouraging being combative in the church. Finally, the fresco is depicted as having fire coming down as a way to represent a quotation of St. Ignatius (and a favorite quote of Loyno): “Go and set everything aflame.”

Both of these churches have some somewhat crazy and over the top images on their ceilings, showing beautiful illusionary scenes that were typical of the Baroque style. They are grandiose towards their love of God and Christ and they are therefore reflected in the art that they have painted on the ceilings of their beloved churches.