Andrea Pozzo, Glorification of Saint Ignatius

Fra Andrea Pozzo, Glorification of Saint Ignatius, ceiling fresco in the nave of Sant’Ignazio, Rome, 1691-94

[0:00] [music]

Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:04] We’re standing on a small circle of yellow stone in the middle of the floor of the nave of Saint Ignatius in Rome. We’re looking up at a miraculous ceiling.

Dr. Beth Harris: [0:16] It really is miraculous. As we look up, we see the architecture, the pilasters, the columns, the colored marble of the nave walls continue up into the ceiling, and it looks so real, but we know that it’s paint.

Dr. Zucker: [0:34] That transition between the actual stone architecture and the painted surface that seems to just rise up infinitely into the heavens is imperceptible. I can’t always make out where one stops and one begins.

Dr. Harris: [0:48] No, it’s impossible.

Dr. Zucker: [0:49] Even when the artist, Pozzo, is rendering figures that we know are simply paint, For instance, the angels, there is a veracity, there’s a kind of physicality, even as they hover. Look, for instance, at the red angel. That wing is simply coming towards us.

Dr. Harris: [1:06] We know that the figures have to be paint because they’re not actually flying around. But it’s almost impossible not to be absorbed into this illusion that we’re looking up at Saint Ignatius being welcomed into heaven by Christ himself.

Dr. Zucker: [1:25] This is the point. This erasure of the distinction between our physical world and the miraculous world of heaven. This brings us into proximity with the divine in the most direct way.

Dr. Harris: [1:38] It’s as though where a heavenly miracle is appearing before us, as though we are having a spiritual vision.

Dr. Zucker: [1:44] This is the Counter-Reformation. The Jesuits are at the center of the attempt by the Catholic Church to reclaim their primacy. They’re with the defenders and the propagators of the Catholic faith.

Dr. Harris: [1:56] The idea of defending the faith against the Protestants at this moment, and also areas of the world that were not Christianized, and bringing them into the fold of the church. Enhancing the power of the church.

Dr. Zucker: [2:08] In fact, Pozzo, the artist, has really made that clear by representing the four great continents of the Earth — Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Africa. And so this notion of the expansion of Catholicism to become this universal truth is central to this painting.

Dr. Harris: [2:24] That was really what Loyola’s intention was in founding the Jesuit order.

Dr. Zucker: [2:29] What we have in this painting is a reminder of just how important it was to reassert the Catholic faith’s belief in the miraculous.

Dr. Harris: [2:37] As we stand in the nave, I almost feel my body rising toward the ceiling, because as we look up, we see figures who are also moving toward heaven. I think that’s something that Baroque art always does, whether we’re looking at Caravaggio or Bernini or here with Pozzo, is breaking down that barrier between our world and the world of the heavenly.

Dr. Zucker: [3:00] In fact, what you describe is expressed directly by the artist, Pozzo, in a letter, where he details what the intent of this painting was.

Dr. Harris: [3:09] He wrote about how he represented “rays sent from heaven caught in a shield inscribed with the name of Jesus, used to light the flames of divine love in a golden cauldron, these to be distributed by angels. And on the opposite side of the vault, avenging angels threaten those who resist the light of faith with divine wrath in the form of thunderbolts and javelins.”

[3:34] I think that this quote shows us the two sides of the Counter-Reformation. One is to reaffirm the faith of those who believe, and the other is to attack those who went against the Church.

Dr. Zucker: [3:48] And just as the narrative of the painting describes the intention of the Jesuits; the style of the painting is a beautiful description of the concerns of the Baroque. Look at the sense of energy, the sense of theatricality, the sense of movement, the dynamism.

[4:04] You were mentioning the avenging angel. Look, for instance, at the diagonal of that javelin. There’s nothing in this painting that is static. Even God is full of movement.

Dr. Harris: [4:14] That’s absolutely true. Even the clouds are moving before us, as though we were looking up into a real sky with wind and atmosphere.

Dr. Zucker: [4:22] The Baroque borrows the naturalism of the High Renaissance, but activates it and puts it to a new purpose, which is here the reaffirming of the Catholic faith.

Dr. Harris: [4:32] We’ve reached a natural endpoint that began with the invention of perspective and the illusion that perspective creates, beginning with Masaccio’s “Holy Trinity.” Here we stand in one point in the church, and that whole illusion comes together for us and merges the physical with the spiritual.

Dr. Zucker: [4:53] An important point of the art and the architecture is to blur the lines between reality and the miraculous, and to make possible the divine in our world, to make it seem as if we can pass easily from one to the other. Metamorphosis is central here. The metamorphosis of the soul is in a sense represented through the metamorphosis of material.

Dr. Harris: [5:17] As we walk through the church, after looking up at the ceiling, I find myself questioning the reality of the space I’m walking through. I start wondering if it too is an illusion.

[5:29] [music]

Title Glorification of Saint Ignatius
Artist(s) Andrea Pozzo
Dates 1691–94
Places Europe / Southern Europe / Italy
Period, Culture, Style Baroque / Italian Baroque
Artwork Type Painting / Mural
Material
Technique Fresco

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[flickr_tags user_id=”82032880@N00″ tags=”Sant’Ignazio,”]

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Cite this page as: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Andrea Pozzo, Glorification of Saint Ignatius," in Smarthistory, December 9, 2015, accessed February 17, 2025, https://smarthistory.org/fra-andrea-pozzo-glorification-of-saint-ignatius/.