Chiesa del Gesù

Church · Rione PignaRome,Italy

The Jesuits' mother church in Rome, one wide preaching hall copied worldwide, its painted ceiling spilling out of the frame into white stucco.

The Chiesa del Gesù is the mother church of the Jesuits, and every part of its plan was chosen to serve preaching. There is one wide nave with no aisles, only shallow side chapels, no screen and no rows of columns, so everyone in the building can see the preacher and hear him. Jesuit churches from Poland to Peru copied that plan. It was finished in 1584, and the front, by Giacomo della Porta, set a pattern as well: two storeys joined by scrolls, a design that almost every Baroque church front afterwards repeats. The ceiling was painted a century later, and it aims at awe rather than clarity. Giovan Battista Gaulli spent eleven years on a vault in which a golden light breaks through the roof. The figures falling out of that light do not stop at the picture frame. They continue in white stucco across the real cornice and cast real shadows on it. In the left transept, the altar of Ignatius holds a machine of levers and counterweights. Once a day it draws the altarpiece painting aside and reveals the figure behind it, in front of whoever has gathered to watch.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Come late afternoon for the altar machine — The mechanism at the altar of Ignatius runs once a day for a few minutes, and the standing space fills up before it starts.
Feed the coin box before you look up — unlit, the vault is a dark mass, and the point is to see where the paint stops and the plaster starts.
The rooms where Ignatius lived have their own entrance — it is on the side of the building, the hours are much shorter, and inside there is a painted corridor that is worth the extra effort.

Things to do

1
Lean your head back and find the join in the ceiling
Stand in the middle of the nave, lean your head right back, and work from the centre of the vault outward. Somewhere near the cornice the painted figures turn into modelled white plaster and start throwing real shadows. Finding the exact place it happens takes a minute and is the reason to come.
2
Take a spot before the altar mechanism opens
Ten minutes before the hour, stand square in front of the altar in the left transept, three or four rows back. When it starts, a system of counterweights moves the great painted canvas aside and the figure behind it appears. It is a seventeenth-century special effect, still operated by hand.
3
See the rooms where Ignatius lived and the Jesuit order began
Beside the church, a separate door leads to the rooms Ignatius lived and died in, kept as they were and much plainer than the basilica. A painted corridor runs off them, drawn so that the architecture only lines up correctly from one marked spot on the floor. Stand on that spot and the corridor looks solid; step off it and the painted architecture pulls out of shape.