Lyceum teacher tours: The beginnings of the Baroque

 My Boy's school has a lecture and tour series for parents and friends of the school where faculty and guests teach us a bit about the city we live in.  It has been wonderful.  The school has been fully online for the students for the past month or two, but the lyceum trips continue with masks, distancing, limited numbers etc.

The first tour of the year was all about Baroque architecture. Rome is the city where Baroque art and architecture really got their start.  The essence of the movement was its tie to the counterreformation movement in the Catholic church, particularly the Jesuit order founded by St Ignatius of Loyola.  This elaborate style with all of it's flourishes and gold was intended to awe and evoke strong emotions and remind people of the glory of the Catholic church at a time when the protestant movement was gaining traction.  There is a fantastic art history series on YouTube that includes a three part series on Baroque art.  The first part talks about Rome.  (These churches are featured in the last 20 minutes or so.  Other series on the Renaissance and Medieval art are equally good.) 

The first church we visited was the Chiesa del Gesu.  The facade of this church is considered to be the first truly Baroque church facade.  You can see the characteristic curls and pillars that are repeated in Baroque style Catholic churches worldwide.

Chiesa del Gesu

The squat rectangular building next door includes the rooms of St Ignatius himself.  The rooms themselves are quite spartan, but the corridor leading to them is elaborately decorated with scenes from the life of St Ignatius.  The painting was done in part by a Jesuit priest named Padre Andrea Pozzo.  He was a master of perspective and illusion.  From one spot in the room the figures seem to come out from the walls.  In this room you can get up close and see how he distorts the images to make it look right.

The Gesu rooms

Inside the church in one of the particularly elaborate side chapels, also designed by Pozzo, is this statue of St Ignatius.  It is revealed once a day.  The head and hands are replacements made by a student of Canova, a neoclassical sculptor.  The originals were reportedly melted down to pay war reparations to Napoleon.

St Ignatius chapel in Chiesa del Gesu

Detail of ceiling of Chiesa del Gesu

This type of perspective with the figures spilling out of the frames is particularly Baroque.

Ceiling, Chiesa del Gesu

Pozzo's masterpiece of illusion and Jesuit propaganda is the ceiling of the church of St Ignatius.

Chiesa del Sant' Ignazio

This is probably my favorite painted ceiling in Rome.  I'm not sure I can explain why.  It might be because it was such a surprise when I first saw it.  We just wandered in and stumbled across it.  It wasn't until later that I came to understand what I already liked so much.  It helps me to appreciate the gaudiness of the Roman Baroque.

The ceiling is flat, but painted to look vaulted with a window open to the heavens with a view of St Ignatius rising to meet Jesus Christ.  The Light coming from Christ and being redirected by St Ignatius leads to the four corners of the earth.  Here represented by the personification of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America.  Baroque artists seemed to like personifying places.  Here it was the places the Jesuits had missions.  In Bernini's fountain in Piazza Navona it is four rivers across the globe.

Ceiling of the Church of St Ignatius

The dark dome is quite different from the explosion of light and color.  It actually came first, or not really.  The dome is an illusion as well.  It is canvas painted to look like the interior of a dome when the builders ran out of money to build an actual dome.  It was Pozzo's work on the pretend dome among other work that earned him the work for the other parts of the ceiling.

View of the "dome" from directly below.

It was such a delightful tour.  I'm enjoying learning about things I know so little about.