Il Gesù

The Jesuits’ mother church in Rome became a model for hundreds of churches all over the world. A wide nave without aisles means everyone can see and hear the sermon. The ceiling fresco lets heaven pour into the church, with figures that seem to fall out of the frame.

The Jesuit order was founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and became one of the most important forces of the Counter-Reformation. Cardinal Alessandro Farnese paid for the order’s main church in Rome. Vignola designed the church and work began in 1568. After Vignola’s death in 1573 Giacomo della Porta took over, and he also designed the façade. The church was consecrated in 1584. The needs of the order shaped the plan: the priests were to preach to large congregations, and so a room was needed in which everyone could see the altar and hear the speaker.

The church has a wide, barrel-vaulted nave with chapels along the sides instead of aisles, a short transept and a dome over the crossing. The façade is built in two storeys, the upper one narrower and linked to the lower one by large volutes. The central door is marked by paired pilasters and a pediment. This type of façade was copied in countless churches. Most of the interior decoration dates from the 17th century. The ceiling fresco of the Triumph of the Name of Jesus was painted by Giovanni Battista Gaulli, known as Baciccio, in the 1670s and 1680s. The painted sky and the stucco figures seem to break through the vault.

The altar of St Ignatius in the left transept, designed by the Jesuit brother Andrea Pozzo around 1700, is one of the most lavish of the Baroque, with lapis lazuli, gilt bronze and a statue of the saint. Il Gesù became the pattern for Jesuit churches in Europe, Latin America and Asia, and the plan with a wide nave and side chapels spread to many other churches. The church is often seen as a transition between the late Renaissance and the Baroque and has been called the first Baroque church.