The Heavenly Vision of Saint Ignatius in Andrea Pozzo’s Majestic Ceiling
July 31st is the feast of Saint Ignatius
In 1650, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory XV, began planning a massive new chapel for the prestigious Roman College, the center of Jesuit education and missionary training. The chapel was to be the first dedicated to Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the Spanish military officer turned missionary founder of the Society of Jesus, who had recently been canonized in 1622.
By 1680, the Jesuits had built the chapel but ran out of money for the dome. To make matters worse, the Dominicans next door were complaining that the future dome—it was to be the second largest behind St Peter’s— would block the light to their library.
In a rush to consecrate the chapel, the Jesuits put a flat ceiling on the dome and, in 1685, hired a Jesuit lay brother, Andrea Pozzo, to paint a fictive dome that would look real. By 1685, Pozzo was already known as a master of qudratura1 and tromp l’oil2 and had even written several treatises on illusionistic perspective. Pozzo painted such a convincing dome that the Jesuits quickly rehired him to paint the enormous barrel-vaulted ceiling.
By this time, illusionism3 was nothing new, but in this ceiling, Pozzo mastered it at a scale never before attempted. The result is breath taking4. (See a 360 view here.)
Upon entering the church, figures appear to move closer and closer to you, bringing you into Saint Ignatius’s heavenly vision. Pozzo seems to strip the veil between heaven and earth, revealing a dizzying multitude of figures among lighted clouds, with Christ and Ignatius in the center. The marble walls and pilasters look like they extend three times their actual height, opening to a dazzling heavenly scene.
There are hundreds of flourishes competing for attention, but eventually, our eyes are drawn to the less crowded center of the ceiling where Christ holds His Cross and emanates light as would the sun. Rays of light, which symbolize divine love and illumination, come from the wound at Christ’s side. Although we can not fully see Christ, we see everything else more clearly because of His light. He brings clarity and illumination to what at first may seem like an overwhelming scene. From Him, we can start to perceive the purpose of the rest of the figures.
As we focus on the center of the ceiling—Ignatius’s face-to-face encounter with Jesus—we realize we are privy to an intimate meeting. To us, Christ remains somewhat hidden by the intensity of the light—the figures of God the Father and the Holy Spirit are even more obscured—but we know Ignatius receives the full vision.
This meeting represents Christ welcoming Ignatius to heaven, but it is also a reimagining of St Ignatius’s famous “Vision at La Storta.” After being ordained in Paris, Ignatius and his friends set out for Rome. On their way, Ignatius received a vision of Jesus holding his cross in a small chapel in La Storta. Here, Jesus told Ignatius he would find favor in Rome.
This vision is significant because, before it, Ignatius wanted to be a missionary to the Holy Land. The doors repeatedly closed on this desire of his. However, shortly after receiving the La Storta vision, Ignatius did find favor in Rome when he and his friends offered their service to the Pope. By the time they arrived in Rome, they already called themselves “the Society of Jesus,” in large part due to Ignatius’s vision.
As Ignatius’s first biographer, Pedro Ribadeneira recounts:
And, with this vision, together with many other excellent illustrations which he had, the most sacred name of JESUS, was so imprinted in his soul, with an earnest desire to take our Savior for his Captain, carrying his Cross after him, that was the cause, that at his, and the other first Father’s humble request, the Apostolic See, at the Confirmation of our religion, called it and named it THE SOCIETY OF JESUS.5
In revealing this vision to us using a naturalistic6 approach, Pozzo intends to remind us that miracles are a fact of life, contra the Protestant Reformers who denied the veracity of miracles after the Apostolic Age.
Pozzo brings us into Ignatius’s vision and shows us how his evangelization efforts continue to be efficacious, even from heaven. Of course, this heavenly vision also reminds us that the supreme miracle of the Mass, the heavenly banquet, takes place in St. Ignazio every day.
There is an allegorical meaning to the fresco as well. Pozzo explains in a letter:
My idea in the painting was to represent the works of St. Ignatius and of the Company of Jesus in spreading the Christian faith worldwide…In the middle of this, I painted the three persons of the Trinity; from the breast of one of which, that is the Human Son, issue forth rays of light that wound the heart of St. Ignatius, and from him, they issue, as a reflection spread to the four parts of the world depicted in the guise of Amazons. 7
In Asia Ignatius’s companion, St Francis Xavier, rises to join Ignatius with Christ, as do St. Aloysius Gonzaga and St. Peter Fabre from Europe. Beneath these figures, angels cast down personifications of vice and error to show how the Jesuit's missionary evangelization engaged in a spiritual battle. The Amazons likewise ride or wrestle with animals representing their corners of the earth (Camel for Asia, Horse for Europe, Puma for America and Crocodile for Africa).
Pozzo continues his explanation:
Those torches that you see in the two extremities of the vault represent the zeal of St. Ignatius, who is sending his companions to preach the Gospel said to them: Ite, Incendite, Inflammate omnia, verifying in him Christ's words: Ignem veni mittere in terram, et quid volo, nisi ut accendatur.
"I have come to cast fire on the earth; would that it were already kindled” (Luke 12:49)!
Because of this scriptural reference, the ceiling can also be interpreted as a visual meditation on the passage from Luke. In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius explains how to use the senses to imagine actively engaging with Christ in the Gospels.
As Pozzo was a Jesuit himself, it’s fair to say this chapel is the fruit of Ignatian contemplation. The ceiling fresco stirs the senses and calls everyone to an encounter with Christ. Ultimately, Pozzo wanted the seminarians to both gratefully receive the charism of Ignatius and imagine themselves reflecting the light as their founder did. We, too, are called to reflect Christ to the world.
fictive architecture
painting that tricks the eyes
The term illusionism is used to describe a painting that creates an an illusion of the real scene.
From Nathanial Hawthorne’s notebooks: “The church seemed to be purposely somewhat darkened, so that I could not well see the details of the ornamentation, except the frescoes on the ceiling of the nave, which were very brilliant, and done in so effectual a style, that I really could not satisfy myself that some of the figures did not actually protrude from the ceiling; in short, that they were not coloured bas-reliefs, instead of frescoes. No words can express the beautiful effect, in an upholstery point of view, of this kind of decoration.”
Alison C. Fleming, “St Ignatius of Loyola’s ‘Vision at La Storta’ and the Foundation of the Society of Jesus,” in BRILL eBooks, 2012, 225–49, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004222083_011.
representing a subject as it appears in the natural world
Evonne Levy, Propoganda and the Jesuit Barouque, p. 151
Words hardly suffice to say how wonderful the picture and its story are.
Very neat. Thank you for all the helpful description (and the Hawthorne quote!). Must be really remarkable to see in person.