If you stand on a certain floor tile in the Church of St. Ignatius in Rome and stare up, you, too, might believe you are at the center of the universe.
One is enticed to stand on a starburst of red marble in the middle of the nave and gaze up at the ceiling fresco from this perfect viewpoint. Before your eyes, a stupendous shortcut to Heaven seems to open up, piercing through the ceiling into the divine.
Few works of art define the baroque experience so thoroughly as the monumental ceiling fresco “Triumph of Sant'Ignazio,” executed by a master of illusion, the Jesuit painter Andrea Pozzo. He would write his own treatise on perspective and be eulogized for achieving on a monumental scale what the baroque movement set out to do. That is, to glorify the Church, and in his case, the Jesuits, too.
To evangelize the whole world was the mission of the Jesuits in the 17th century, working hand in hand with colonial powers, trade companies, kings, emperors, and heads of state to spread Catholicism to the four corners of the globe.
The Jesuits’ founder, Ignatius of Loyola, was canonized in 1622, and Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi dedicated a new church, then under construction in Rome, to the saint at the behest of Pope Gregory XV.
Seeking out architects and artists for this project was done in-house to keep costs down, and the name Andrea Pozzo, the incredible master of perspective, cropped into the forefront when it came time to decorate what was more-or-less a flat ceiling in the nave.
His work had already garnered attention inside the church, as he had completed an illusionistic dome that gave the impression from inside that the building had a cupola, when in fact the painting was done on nothing more than canvas on a flat ceiling.
The request for this illusionistic cupola and its execution had satisfied a conundrum: In want of a done, they found that adding one would have blocked out the light of an adjacent building in the Colegio Romano. Besides, a flat, faux dome was far cheaper to maintain than the real thing. The artist’s perspectival solution was so ingenious, they would call on him again for a far more momentous project.
Thus, the painter Pozzo was let loose to tackle the nave. And as he had done in his dome, he devised a scheme based on linear perspective—using lines that converge at a single point to create depth—to break the relatively confined space of the church. A style was used that involved the seamless merging of spaces, both real and illusionistic. In vogue during the baroque era, it was called “trompe-l'œil,” or “deceive the eye” in French.
The somewhat shallow ceiling of the nave would soar illusionistically to three times that height in a grand aula above one’s head, complete with faux architectural columns and arches bathed in divine light. So perfect is the perspective that it’s hard to tell where the architecture stops and the ceiling takes over.
Only the pastel clouds and allegorical heavenly figures enacting their monumental theatre performance betray the reality that the scene is entirely fictional.
In this rippling celestial scene, filled with drama and emotion, the characters populate the clouds, the architecture, and even thin air, floating and flying in the cerulean-blue sky or far above, in the light-infused heavens.
At the center, above the rest, a levitating Christ bears a cross. From a wound in his side, a beam of light is seen emanating, drawing one’s eye diagonally toward the saint, ascending to heaven to meet his Lord. That ray of light, symbolic of divine illumination, refracts off him to the four corners of the fresco, symbolizing the four corners of the world.
In each corner, there are allegories of women: Asia, riding a camel, hand raised to receive the light. Africa, dark-skinned, riding what we must believe to be a crocodile. America, a fair-skinned, blond amazon with a feathered headdress, wielding an arrow and confronting a cougar. Europa, one hand holding a scepter, the other resting on an orb.
Alas, not even photographs as we have shown here can capture the real baroque experience, let alone mere words. The “total art” of the period combines architecture, sculpture, and painting, and demands the viewer’s presence and participation in the full experience.
Even onsite, though, the weakness in Pozzo’s work is precisely in the geometric precision that so cleverly fools the eye. The more the viewer stands off-center, the more the illusion warps until it finally collapses into a distorted mess. That red marble marker on the floor was placed there for a reason. So that the viewer can get the best view possible.
Similarly, the painting conveys its message most convincingly—employing its illusionism, drama, and emotion—to sway the viewer, yet it’s a message that requires a Catholic and Eurocentric viewpoint to accept.
